irf.. AuRIC, DEPT.

1

RURAL IMPROVEMENT

BY

B. G. NORTHROP,

SECRETARY OF CONNECTICUT BOARD OP EDUCATION.

NEW HAVEN:
TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR.

1880.

EC" j

RURAL IMPROVEMENT.

BY

B. G. NORTHROP,

//

SECRETARY OF CONNECTICUT BOARD OF EDUCATION.

NEW HAVEN:

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR.
1880.

Public interest in home and rural adornment is rapidly increasing. A little
foresight will show that no rural community can afford to continue without some
organized efforts for this purpose, such as have done great good in 'promoting
public health, cultivating public spirit, quickening social and intellectual life, build-
ing up and beautifying towns, and thus enhancing the value of real estate. I shall
be happy to cooperate with public-spirited citizens who are moving in this matter,
and will lecture on this subject, without charge either for services or expenses, hi
any town in Connecticut. In this reprint from an official Report, a few local allu-
sions are retained to show the original aim of the writer and the application of
kindred plans and principles to other fields.

ltd aim

CONTENTS

OBJECTS or RURAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS: —

1. To cultivate public spirit and town pride, . .3

2. To quicken the intellectual life of the people, ... 7

3. Promote good fellowship, . .8

4. Secure better hygienic conditions, ... 9

5. Improve road-sides, roads, side-walks, and light streets, . .10

6. Improve public grounds, . . . . . . 11

7. Educational bearings, . . . . . . .14

8. Improye;the home^'aid[ttcnie-life of the people, . . 17

9. Tr,ee-.planting, . . • ... • > • • -21

10. E'aunmakf bearings; :' ...... 29

11. Recuperation of sterile lands, . . . . . .30

12. Improve the surroundings of railway stations, ... 43

13. Minor aims, . . . . . . . .44

14. Betterment of factory surroundings, .... 45

15. The Two Model Factories, . . . . . .46

16. Plan or "Constitution" of a Rural Improvement Association, . 51

RURAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS.

When, over ten years ago, an effort was begun to improve
and build up our country towns,* it encountered, as I then
predicted, some misapprehension and ridicule. During this
period of quiet work, my faith in the final result has never
faltered. But sooner than I expected, this Rural Improvement
movement has assumed such large proportions as to silence
cavil, and command the respect and cooperation of the wisest
and best men of our State. There are now over fifty of these
associations in Connecticut which speak for themselves. Their
objects are manifold, of which the following are the more
important :

1. To cultivate public spirit and foster town pride, is
an object which should enlist the sympathies of all our
citizens. Our youth should be trained in their homes
and schools to be jealous of the good name of their town
and State. Hence the history of our towns and our State
should be generally taught in order to develop a just town
and State pride. We are prone to underrate the great value
of this feeling. The love of home and the love of one's
town and State are akin. This sentiment formed in early life
should grow with our years and attainments. The want of it
indicates a serious defect of character. I believe with Dr.
Bushnell that u the man who does not wish to love and honor
the town and State in which he and his children were born has
no heart in his bosom. We are too little aware of our noble
history as a State, a history of such transcendent beauty, '
freshened by so many heroic incidents, having so great a
wealth of character and achievement. This early history of
Connecticut is really the most beautiful that was ever permit-
ted to any people in the world." This cannot justly be called
a partial but unfounded laudation of one's State. The Histo-

* " How to beautify and build up our country towns" was the title of an article
In my Report for 1869.

274435

rian, Bancroft, a citizen of Massachusetts, biased by no Con-
necticut predilections says, in language as striking as that of
Dr. Bushnell, "There is no State in the Union, and I know not
any in the world, in whose early history, if I were a citizen, I
could find more of which to be proud and less that I should
wish to blot."

The sentiment that honors and cherishes one's birth-place
is noble and ennobling. I am aware that a popular prejudice
associates weakness and effeminacy with such taste and refine-
ment. But this sentiment has ever characterized the greatest
and best of men and is a prime element of true manhood.
The cold and selfish soul is sterile in heroic virtues. There is
an American railway king, now a millionaire, who seldom
visits his native town, takes no interest in it, does nothing for
it, and leaves even the old homestead and grounds, though still
owned by him, neglected and forlorn. This fact alone natu-
rally suggests a selfish, soulless character. Indeed such exam-
ples are too common. On the other hand, the greatest grandeur
of intellect accords with fervor of filial feeling, with fondest
home attachments and with refinement and delicacy of taste.
It is perfectly in keeping with the intellectual greatness of
Daniel Webster to find him fondly cherishing and beautifying
the old homestead, enriching and improving the paternal acres
and eloquently discoursing on the sacred associations of home,
the transcendent sweets of domestic life, the happiness of kin-
dred, and parents and children. Washington was as delicate,
courteous and affectionate in his domestic relations and attach-
ments as he was wise in council and courageous in war. A
beautiful trait in Bryant's character was evinced by his devo-
tion to the old homestead and the little secluded town of
Cummington among the Hampshire hills, hallowed to him by
the memories of father and mother, and the sacred associations
of childhood. To that little town which he did so much
to adorn and enrich and educate, he ever deemed it a privi-
lege to make an annual visit — a summer visit with his house-
hold, often prolonged for weeks and months. That the early
associations might remain, raising the old house, he built
beneath and around it a stately mansion, so that the paternal
rooms remained intact.

Ex-Governor Hubbard well says, "this work of Village Im-
provement* will not fail, I trust, to awaken public attention
and provoke imitation throughout our State, and excite and
even shame our own people into a larger public spirit and
better efforts to redeem from negligence our rural homes and
villages. Nearly all our towns are full of objects of natural
beauty easy of development, and very many of them rich in
legendary and historical associations. What is greatly wanted
is something more of rural art and adornment. Something
which shall beautify our country villages, educate public taste,
make the homes of the fathers dearer to their sons and the local
associations of childhood dearer to old age, and thus turn back,
in part at least, the tide of migration from the rural towns, and
make the city seek the country life and make it what it used
to be in our own State, and what it still is in the oldest and
most cultivated nations of the world."

In our declining towns especially, local pride and public
spirit should be fostered. Discouragement, if not self-dis-
paragement, has been their danger and a source of increasing
weakness. Instead of the despair that says u it is of no use,
the fates are against us, we are doomed to decline more and
more," true courage and patriotism would face the facts,
inquire into their causes, and, if possible, find a remedy. The
lack of public spirit has contributed to the decline of many
towns. The evidence of this is sometimes seen in dilapidated
school-houses, poor roads, absence of sidewalks, and neglected
common, cemetery or church. Remembering that what any
people can be depends largely on what they have been, the his-
tory of our towns should kindle within us a just pride for the
past and a new inspiration for the future. To this end, each
town needs to be distinctly conscious of itself, jealous of its
good name, liberal in supporting its schools and churches,
adorning its park or "Tillage Green," cemetery and streets,
and in every practicable way guarding its honor, and ambi-
tious of its prosperity.

In New England, the township is the unit, but in the Southern
and in many of the Western States the " parish" or the county
is the unit, while the township organization is wanting or is

* Referring to the example set in Haddam.

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comparatively insignificant. The maintenance of schools and
roads and bridges, the support of the poor and many kindred
matters which in New England are town affairs, are there man-
aged countywise. The town organizations with the town meet-
ings where every citizen is the peer of any other, have been
one of the prime factors in developing the sterling traits of
'New England character. They have fostered that self-reliance,
independence and energy which have given strength and vitality
to our northern civilization and effectively aided in the main-
tenance of our free institutions. The influence and importance
of the towns of New England was early and ably set forth by
Samuel Adams. It was a sound motto of old John Adams,
that " the ownership of land is essential to individual self-respect
and thrift and to national dignity and prosperity." It is not
the landless, but farmers, who have been foremost as defenders
of liberty because they have been thus defenders of home. The
free land tenure, the system of small farms grouped into town-
ships from the early settlement of New England fostered the
free, liberty-loving spirit of our fathers, without which the Rev-
olutionary war would have been impossible, for these "little
democratic republics" nurtured that capacity for self govern-
ment to which was due the achievement of our independence.

Says Professor Joel Parker : " It was through these organiza-
tions that an industrious yeomanry, while following the plow,
. and the diligent tenants of workshops while handling their
tools, were converted into an armed soldiery on the first news
that the British left the limits of Boston and were marching
into the country. The dragons' ibeeth that produced that har-
vest were sown in the shape of farmers and mechanics, who,
holding themselves in readiness as minute men, required but
the heat of warlike intelligence to burst into full life and vigor
as a patriotic army. It was through these town organizations,
and not through a want of patriotism elsewhere, that the sup-
port of the Declaration of Independence was more effectual in
New England than in any other of the colonies."

Nothing analogous to our town system prevails in the South-
ern States or in England. The influence of these town organi-
zations and town meetings, where all meet on a level with-
out distinction of race or party or sect, has largely caused

the contrast in the civilization of the North and the South, from
our early history till to-day. In the language of Senator Dawes,
"With the township here, its vital force unimpaired, New
England can never become South Carolina or Mississippi, and
without the educating influence that comes of the town, neither
South Carolina nor Mississippi will ever become New England
in the enjoyment of liberty regulated by law. They are the
very corner-stone of republican institutions among us, and they or
their equivalent must take the place of that unorganized parish
system by which Southern plantation society is loosely linked
together, before a representative republic, in anything else than
name, can be maintained among them. The town is not
therefore to fade, but is to continue to be the nursery of intelli-
gent, untrammeled, thinking freemen, the source, the supply of
the government they themselves have instituted on this conti-
nent." My sympathies and efforts have long been enlisted in
behalf of the declining towns which most need help and encour-
agement.

This is one source of my interest in the work of Rural
Improvement, now so widely diffused through the State.
Connecticut cannot afford to allow any of these old towns to
die out. Many of them have a noble history, and if we of the
present generation do our duty, they are to have a grand future.
A most encouraging history would be that fitly recording the
achievements of those who have gone out from these rural dis-
tricts which are thus continually enriching the great centers of
population and wealth.

2. To quicken the intellectual life of the people is an
important aim of these associations. Besides the liberal
support of schools, the founding of libraries is an important
help in this direction which should be encouraged in all
our towns. Their value cannot be over-estimated. The sup-
ply of good books increases the demand. A taste for books
has been awakened in many towns by a well-selected library
where the improvement has been as marked in the quality
as in the quantity of the books read. Such a library natu-
rally becomes the pride and treasure of a town, rendering
it a more desirable place of residence, adding attractions to
every intelligent home within its limits, and helping both

8

teachers and pupils in the schools. With books at hand, the
teacher may be continually progressing. Without them he is
in danger of getting into the ruts. The mind that ceases to
progress soon retrogrades ; unless himself eager for improve-
ment, the teacher can impart no inspiration or love of
knowledge to his pupils. While libraries educate the whole
people, I have been especially gratified to observe how diligently
their volumes are used by the school boys and girls who would
otherwise have only the dime novel or papers more objection-
able. Once give a boy a taste for good books and access to a
choice library, and then place him where you will, let his
calling be what it may, he will find time for study and will
devote the intervals of labor to reading. Multitudes of men,
thus self-educated, owe their eminence and success to an early
taste for reading and access to libraries. Their example should
show our youth that their evenings need not be idled away
because the days must be occupied with business or labor.

8. The promotion of good fellowship is another aim. The
charm of country life, so dependent on the interchange of
neighborly courtesies and the maintenance of friendly relations,
is often marred by needless strifes and alienations. The social
life of a town is thus sadly embittered. A Kural Improve-
ment Association tends to fraternize the people of a town by
leading all classes to meet on common ground and work
together for a common object. Thus differences of rank, or
sect or party are forgotten, while as fellow-citizens they carry
out plans of equal interest to all, and effectively combine
to promote the general good. In some towns, good fellowship
as well as intellectual improvement has been promoted by
organizing reading circles. Selections in prose and poetry,
often a play of Shakespeare, the several parts having been
previously assigned, are the subject of careful private study
and drill. These weekly circles make a profitable evening
school. Their social influence is still more extended by an
occasional " rehearsal " of a more public character. Divided
as the residents of our rural districts and villages too often are
by prejudice or neighborhood difficulties, every association
where social amenities are cultivated should be encouraged.
The support of a Village Reading Eoom, well supplied with

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the leading journals of the day — daily, weekly, monthly or
quarterly — is a movement in the same direction. A course of
Lyceum Lectures is sustained by many Rural Improvement
Associations, the profits of which are their "benefit " while the
social opportunities thus opened are clear gain.

An annual festival under the direction of the Bural Im-
provement Association tends to deepen and sustain public
interest in its work. In some towns literary exercises, ad-
dresses, a poem, and music, fill the programme; in others a
collation becomes another bond of union and fellowship. In
the rigid, and sometimes frigid, state of rural life, too often found
in New England, we need to cultivate the social amenities and
learn the art of "turning work into play." The supposed
monotony and dullness of country life drive many to the city.
It is wise to multiply occasions for social enjoyment. The
arbor-day festival may help to counteract the tendency of rural
life to isolation and seclusion, lifting out of the ruts of a dull
plodding monotony, promoting neighborly feeling, and strength-
ening social ties. The rural laborers in Switzerland and Ger-
many socialize far more than American farmers. Their festive
spirit is a strongly-marked feature of their character. It is
manifested in the family, in neighborhood greetings and meet-
ings, in schools, in rifle feasts, in processions and various social
gatherings. They have a passion for nature, and love to fre-
quent their beautiful groves and gardens, for parks or woods
abound in or near their cities and towns. This genial spirit is
everywhere fostered by music — both vocal and instrumental.
As a result, there is an inexpressible something in the German
character that carries mirthful and happy childhood into old
age, giving an added charm to social life, and lightness and
cheer to sober work.

4. Another aim of these associations is the promotion of
public health by securing better hygienic conditions in the
homes of the people and in their surroundings. Some of our
country towns, naturally favorable to health and longevity,
have suffered fearfully from the ravages of diseases, evidently
caused by neglect of hygienic laws. In many towns much has
lately been done in the matter of drainage, removal of waste
and guarding wells and water supplies from impurities.

10

5. The improvement of road sides is attracting much atten-
tion. Some towns have made appropriations to clear them of
brush and rubbish and keep them like a lawn. Others are
adorning them with extensive lines of trees.

6. The improvement of roads, though of great importance,
has secured less attention from these associations, as the town
authorities usually care for them, and other objects are more
urgent. Dr. Bushnell well says : " The road is that physical
sign, or symbol, by which you will best understand any age or
people. If they have no roads, they are savages ; for the road
is the creation of man and a type of civilized society. If you
wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic,
religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going
into universities and libraries ; something, also, by the work
that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but
quite as much by looking at the roads. For if there is any
motion in society, the road, which is the symbol of motion,
will indicate the fact. Nothing makes an inroad without mak-
ing a road. All creative action, whether in government, in-
dustry, thought or religion, creates roads."

7. The making or improving of sidewalks meets a felt want
in many towns. In no other way can the comfort and
sociality of a village be promoted so economically as by making
sidewalks. Simple gravel walks, when the concrete would be
too expensive, serve an admirable purpose. One town has
lately completed many miles of neat sidewalks, which add
greatly to the attractiveness of the village.

The fine footways abounding throughout England invite the
pedestrian habits of the women of that country. It is largely
because they exercise daily in the open air, that they retain so
long the bloom and vigor of youth. More outdoor rambles
would promote the health and prolong the lives of American
women. Besides favoring the luxury and healthfulness of
open air exercise, footways invite friendly calls and foster
social life and rural enjoyment.

8. Street lights remove another hindrance to social inter-
course in country villages. When the day's work is done the
evening is the favorite time for calls, if the darkness does not
forbid. The cost of kerosene illuminators is now moderate.

11

It is one of the signs of social advancement that many of our
associations are thus practically saying " Let there be light."

9. Increased attention is given to parks, the village green,
the cemetery, church grounds, school lots and other public
grounds. I hope hereafter to give a brief sketch of the public
parks of Connecticut, some of which are already exceedingly
beautiful. Others are now planned which will contribute
greatly to the beauty and adornment of our State.

Two fine parks, recently provided by private munificence
deserve a special mention. On the thirty -first day of October,
1878, Hon. David Dudley Field, Stephen J. Field of the
United States Supreme Court, Cyrus W. Field, and Henry
M. Field, D.D., surviving sons of Kev. David Dudley Field,
D.D., appropriately celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of
their father's marriage by presenting to the town of Haddam
two tracts of land for a public park. These grounds, finely
laid out with drives and walks by Mr. Olmsted of New York,
the landscape gardener, and adorned with the choicest orna-
mental trees, indigenous and imported, is a grand contribution
to the taste, sociality, good fellowship, education, growth and
prosperity of the town. Isinglass Hill, a high bluff on the
eastern border of these grounds commands for many miles a
magnificent view of the Connecticut river and its valley, with
the long range of hills beyond. In behalf of the friends of
rural adornment and of education, so far as I may represent
them, I desire to express to the eminent Field brothers, a high
appreciation of their grand gift to Haddam and thus to Con-
necticut, for our State takes a lively interest in the growth and
prosperity of each of her towns. This worthy example ought
to make many others, opportune as it is, in view of the grow-
ing interest in rural improvement throughout our State.
There is hardly one of our towns, that has not at home or
abroad, some favored sons who by forming parks or founding
schools or libraries, could easily render this most fitting tribute
to their mother soil, and thus be gratefully recognized as the
benefactors of their fellow citizens and of future generations.
The ambition to beautify and benefit one's native town is
worthy of the best and noblest characters. There is a rare
luxury in witnessing the fruits of one's benefactions, giving

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while living and able to enjoy the rich results, rather than
leaving legacies to be lessened or lost in the wrangles of con-
tending heirs.

The value of a park was happily set forth by Hon. David
Dudley Field in the following presentation address given before
a large concourse of people at the dedication of these grounds.

" We are here to deliver into your hands the parcel of
ground on which we are standing, and that other which lies in
view before us, to be kept as pleasure grounds for the people
of Haddam in all time to come. We give them in memory of
our father and mother, who were married seventy-five years
ago to-day, and came immediately afterward to make their
abode on this river-side, where he was soon to become the
pastor of the church and congregation. Here they lived
active and useful lives, in the fear of God and love of man,
doing faithfully their several duties, he in public ministrations
from pulpit and altar, at bridal, baptism, and burial, and she
in the quiet tasks of her well-ordered household. Here they
passed their first years together ; here they raised their first
domestic altar, and here most of their children were born.
For this cause, and in grateful remembrance of their love and
sacrifices for us, we, their surviving children, four of us only
out of ten, present these memorials, not of cold stone, though
the hills about us teem with everlasting granite, but of shaded
walks, green lawns, and spreading trees, where this people
may find pleasure and refreshment, generation after generation,
so long as these fertile meadows, these rugged hills, and this
winding river shall endure. And remembering that " beauty
is truth, truth beauty," we hope that they will cultivate here
that love of nature, which is a joy in youth and a solace in
age ; which nourishes the affections, and refines while it
exalts ; which rejoices in the seasons and the months as they
pass, with their varying beauties ; catches the gladness of June
and the radiance of the October woods ; and in every waking
moment, sees, hears, or feels something of the world around
to take pleasure in and be grateful for. We trust that they
will come, not in this year only or this century, but in future
years and centuries, the fair young girl, the matron in the
glory of womanhood, the boy and the man, grandson and

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grandsire, in whatever condition or circumstance, poverty or
riches, joy or sorrow, to find here a new joy or a respite from
sorrow ; to drink in the light of sun and moon, listen to the
music of birds and winds, feel the fresh breath of life-sustain-
ing air, thank God and take courage.

" Eeverently then we dedicate these memorials of our parents,
to the enjoyment forever hereafter of those, and the descend-
ants of those, whom they loved, and among whom they dwelt."

Koseland Park, in Woodstock, promises to be one of the
largest and finest private parks in the country. It includes
sixty acres of land, with an undulating surface, bordering on
Woodstock Lake, a beautiful pear-shaped sheet of water one
mile long and half a mile wide, situated in a broad amphi-
theatre of wooded hills and fields, some fifteen miles long and
five miles wide. The park contains three miniature mounts,
the highest of which is Mount Eliot, so named from the
u apostle" John Eliot who preached to the Indians in Wood-
stock, and as tradition has it, upon this hill. About one-
quarter of the ground, including the three hills, is already a
well-wooded grove of chestnut, oak, maple, beach and but-
ternut, many of which have reached majestic proportions.
About 2000 ornamental trees of choicest varieties have
recently been planted in these grounds and along the many
paths and drive-ways. Over 8000 flowering shrubs, plants
and rose bushes have also been set out. 200,000 loads of
sand and loam have already been used in filling up marshy
spots and inequalities and in grading walks, avenues and
grass-plots, and as much more will be required to complete the
present plans. The tasteful buildings erected on the " made
grounds" near the lake are a fine boat and bath house, a
keeper's lodge with ample stable and shed. A windmill sup-
plies the dryer portion of the park with water.

The citizens of Woodstock, and of Windham county, owe
this magnificent park to Henry C. Bowen, of the New York
Independent, who has already expended upon it over $40,000.
Though the work is rapidly progressing and Mr. Bowen
usually devotes five hours a day during the summer to assist-
ing and directing these improvements, the work will not be
completed till 1884 This park, accessible to all classes, is a

14

favorite place of resort to the citizens of Woodstock and
indeed of Windham county, who gratefully appreciate the
taste and liberality of the proprietor. Thousands of people
annually gather here to celebrate the fourth of July, and listen
to the distinguished speakers invited to address them. In
view of the number and eminence of the speakers and the wide
range of their topics this celebration on these beautiful grounds
is quite unique.

10. The educational bearings of this subject, if less obvious,
are not less important. The external improvements prompted
by these associations have in many towns developed a local
pride and public spirit which have displaced many a bleak,
weather-worn and comfortless school-house. Public interest
once enlisted in the adornment of streets, parks, cemeteries and
kindred plans is sure to embrace the school- house. The people
are learning that village improvement promotes the growth
and prosperity of a town by inviting wealthy and desirable
residents from abroad, just as neglected streets, school-houses
and other signs of an illiberal policy invest a town with an
air of discouragement and decay. The influence of such an
association in cultivating the taste, fostering the study of
nature, developing in youth a love of flowers, vines, shrub-
bery and trees, all the stronger because they have planted or
cultivated them, thus fostering domestic attachments and
checking the excessive passion for city life, suggest some of
the ways in which it supplements the work of the school.
The love of nature sharpens the senses and quickens all the
intellectual faculties. An early interest in natural history
favors habits of observation and trains both the memory and
imagination.

The taste should be early cultivated. To love the beautiful
should be held as a religious duty. In the very structure of
our being, God rebukes the ignorance or indolence that so
often dwarfs this noble faculty, designed to be an ally of virtue
subordinating the animal and sensuous to the intellectual
and spiritual. The love of the beautiful may become a
source of high enjoyment, and give new incentives to mental
effort. It reverently admires nature and makes her a constant
teacher.

15

" No department of rnind ought to be placed higher than the
love of the beautiful. The love of beauty in God must be
immense. The love of beauty carries a high moral quality
with it. It is a law that we should worship God in beauty.
Nowhere was it more powerful than in the temple. We see it
in Kevelation. The love of beauty increases in people the idea
they have of the truth."

A true Christian culture should lead our citizens, each to
adorn his town, village, street, school-house, and first of all his
home. Every tree, flower or shrub in the garden, every tasteful
engraving or painting in the house, may add a new link to the
golden chain which should ever bind the heart of childhood to
the hearth-stone. Let taste brighten the joys of the domestic
circle, and help to invest every scene in life with higher signifi-
cance arid beauty. The esthetic element as an educational
force has been often ignored, and the craving of the juvenile
mind for the beautiful rudely repressed.

Nature is the great educator. Birds, flowers, insects, and
all animals are our practical primary teachers. In God's plan,
facts and objects as best seen in the country are the earliest
and the leading instruments of developing the faculties of the
juvenile mind. They cannot be fully trained when cooped up
within brick walls, witnessing only city scenes.

In all our history the country has proved the great school
of mind. Here dwell and for wise reasons, here God intended
should dwell, the great majority of mankind. The country
sends far more than its proportion of gifted men to the great
centers of influence. It is thus continually enriching the
cities, for towards them are flowing, like their streams, the
material and still more the mental treasures which have their
origin in the mountain springs and without which the cities
would die out. Called officially to visit all the towns of
Massachusetts and Connecticut, I have often asked "what emi-
nent men have you raised here." Almost every town can give
a list of which they are justly proud. A most instructive his-
tory would be that which should fitly record the achieve-
ments of those who have gone out from these rural districts
to fill positions of commanding influence. In the language
of Dr. Bushnell : " It is not in the great cities, nor in the con-

16

fined shops of trade but principally in agriculture, that the
best stock or staple of men is grown. It is in the open air
— in communion with the sky, the earth and all living things
— that the largest inspiration is drunk in and the vital energies
of a real man constructed." Certainly the country may claim
superior advantages for the physical, mental, and moral train-
ing of the young, wherever good schools are maintained.

Though I studied the Kindergarten system in Germany, and
advocate it, I still contend that the best sort of Kindergarten
is the open fields and varied objects of the country, if only
the eye be trained to habits of careful observation. There,
things are studied more than mere words, or rather the per-
ception of objects and their qualities furnishes the material
for thought and gives precision to language. Hugh Miller
used to say : " The best school I ever attended was the miscel-
lany of objects and circumstances surrounding me in my
native district, challenging the first exercise of my senses and
my fancy and that is a species of education open to all . ...
Open your eyes, the commonest objects are worth looking
at, even weeds and stones and the most familiar animals."
He was educated by the rocks of old Cromarty on the shore
of the North Sea. Scott was educated by the sounding surges
of the sea. Webster was educated by the Salisbury Mountains.
How different would have been the history of Washington
had he spent his youth amid the excitements and diver-
sions of a great city like London. Would Jefferson have
attained his eminence and power, had he been early dandled
in the lap of affluence in a city like Paris ? How different
would have been the career of the great naturalist of our day,
had he spent his childhood in a large city. How fortunate for
Agassiz and for the world that his native home was in the
beautiful little village of Mottier in Switzerland, lying midway
between the lakes of Neuchatel and Morat. The woody hills,
the gardens and vineyards, the banks, cascades and lakes ;
the Jura and more distant Alps, with magnificent glaciers,
glistening fields of snow and ice ; these were his early teachers.
His very sports served to convert the observing boy into the
future naturalist. Theke were boating, fishing, hunting, study-
ing birds and turtles, gathering bugs, butterflies and other

17

insects, roaming in the woods, taking long excursions on Lake
Neuchatel, in whose waters clear to an unusual depth he could
find the haunts and study the habits of the fish ; climbing
steep hills and rocky cliffs and even ascending the magnificent
precipices of the Jura. Living much in the open air, he
observed the birds so as to distinguish them by their beak,
claws, size, form, plumage, song or flight. If in early life he
knew less of books he had studied nature more.

The late Charles Hammond, one of the most successful of
American teachers, used to say he was educated by the grand
scenery of his native town — Union — comprising the highest
land in the State east of the Connecticut river. From the
homestead, he could see the church spires in many of the
surrounding towns. From a hill near by, he used to "gaze
at Wachusett Mountain in Massachusetts, and in a clear day
could distinctly see the deep blue peak of Monadnock in
Jeffrey, New Hampshire." To continue his own words, " my
father observed nature and loved flowers, and early taught me
to observe the properties of plants and trees, and learn the
names, habits, retreats and voices of the birds." He often
revisited this grand scenery to which he attributed the inspira-
tion of his youth.

I often advise the sons of wealth in our cities to spend at
least one year in the country, with its freer sports, and wider
range of rambles, or better still, for both physical and mental
training, to give one season to hard work on the farm or in the
shop. The practical skill thus gained in adapting means to
ends in observing things, common objects and animals, may
compensate for some loss of book learning and lead one
afterwards, like Agassiz, to pursue text-books with greater zest.

11. My interest in this work centers in the improvement of
the homes and home life of our people. " The hope of America
is the homes of America," and the hope of Connecticut is the
homes of Connecticut. There remain still too many homes
and grounds desolate, neglected and repulsive, where taste and
trees, shrubbery, hedges or creeping vines with a lawn would
make " the wilderness blossom as the rose." Unquestionably,
neglect and slatternliness in and around the house repel from
their rural homes many youth who might otherwise be bound

18

in 'strongest ties to the fireside. Our farmers and mechanics,
or their thoughtful and thrifty wives, are beginning to realize
how easily and economically, often without any outlay of
money, they can surround their homes with flowers, the Vir-
ginia creeper, grape vines or trees, and thus increase the
beauty, the attractions and market value of the homestead.
These embellishments of the home and grounds help to culti-
vate domestic sentiments.

Without a Rural Improvement Association our best towns
fall far short of what they might be and ought to be. Too
often, neglected private grounds, dilapidated dwellings, barns
or sheds, or a street ugly with piles of decaying brush or
chips, discarded fruit cans, broken harrows, carts or sleds,
a front fence with missing pickets and a disabled gate, give
an air of shiftlessness that sadly mars the effect of an
otherwise beautiful village. Here an Association is needed to
develop that private taste and public spirit which will remove
such defects and disfigurements. When every citizen is thus
stimulated to make his own grounds and wayside not only
free from rubbish, but neat and attractive, the entire town
becomes so inviting and home-like as to give new value to
its wealth and new attractions to all its homes. Such affec-
tionate care and attention to the homes indicate a kindly,
intelligent, home-loving people, and no better praise need be
given to any people than that they tenderly cherish their homes.
A stranger can hardly drive through such a town without say-
ing " Here are people of refinement, who love their homes,
and therefore tastefully guard the surroundings of their daily
life." These surroundings, trifling as they seem to some, are
the more important, because they are constant forces in mould-
ing character. " Cleaning up, dusting, putting things in order,"
are little matters in the parlor, sitting-room or kitchen, yet
how soon each becomes forbidding, when these trifles are neg-
lected. Just so in a village, these minor matters neglected,
and the comfort, content, reputation and prosperity of a whole
community suffer, but worst of all, home life suffers and char-
acter deteriorates.

Modern civilization relates specially to the homes and social
life of the people, to their health, comfort and thrift, their

19

intellectual and moral advancement. In earlier times and
other lands, men were counted in the aggregate. They were
valued as they helped to swell the revenues or retinues of kings
and nobles. The government was the unit, and each individual
only added one to the roll of soldiers or serfs. With us,
the individual is the unit and the government is for the people
as well as by the people.

It is a good omen that public interest in the embellishments
of rural homes and villages is widely extending, and that the
varied charms of the country with its superior advantages for
the physical and moral training of children are attracting many
thoughtful men to the simpler enjoyments and employments of
rural life. With the growth of public taste the day is not
distant when beautiful country seats and villages will abound
throughout Connecticut. Dr. Bushnell, with his keen observa-
tion and intense love of rural scenery was wont to say, "No
part of our country between the two oceans is susceptible of
greater external beauty than Connecticut." A taste for rural
adornment is a source of physical, mental and moral health
as well as enjoyment. The parentage of parks, lawns, trees,
flowers, vines and shrubs becomes a matter of just pride and
binds one to the spot he has adorned.

The hankering for city diversions and excitements, and am-
bition for easier lives and more genteel employments have
brought ruin to multitudes and financial disaster to the nation.
A great peril to the land to-day comes from the swelling
throngs, ranging from the reckless tramp to the fashionable
idler, who are ever devising expedients, foul or fair, to get
a living without work. The disparagement of country life has
been one of the worst tendencies of the times.

Every influence should therefore be combined to foster
home attachments, for there is protection as well as education
in the fervent love of home with its sacred associations. Patri-
otism itself hinges on the domestic sentiments. When one's
home becomes the Eden of taste and interest and joy, those
healthful local ties are formed which bind him first and most to
the spot he has embellished, and then to his town, his State
and country. Whatever adorns one's home and ennobles his
domestic life, strengthens his love of country and nurtures all

20

the better elements of his nature. On the other hand, no man
without local attachments can have genuine patriotism. As
happy in one place as in another, he is like a tree planted in a
tub, portable indeed, but at the expense of growth and strength.
Said Monsieur Lariaux, the French Deputy to the American
Evangelical Alliance, in his farewell address, " your homes,
homes, sweet homes — these are the safeguards of your freedom.
Oh, pray, as you gather at your family altars, that my poor
France may have such homes."

In traveling thousands of miles annually for many years,
my experience has led me to expect kindness and refinement
in the humblest hamlet to which flowers, well trimmed shrubs,
or neat awd cultivated grounds invite. But these outward
adornments of the house, however valuable, are but symbols of
what should be the attractions of its inner life, realizing the
highest beauty in the unwearied and delicate attentions of each
to all. The central duty of life is the creation of happy homes.
The higher aim of the industries of the world, whether in agri-
culture, manufactures or commerce, and the purpose for which
government itself is worthy to be sustained, is that men may
live in happy homes. Let then the sunlight of generous love
fertilize our homes as the garden of God — worthy to be as
heaven designed, a divine institution, the only earthly paradise,
the best symbol of and the best school for the paradise above,
the spot most sacred on earth, to be cherished with the most
grateful memories in all the future. Back to this holy ground
consecrated by flowers and shrubs and trees each tenderly asso-
ciated with a mother's love and a father's care, let Thanksgiving
gather the scattered circle. Let the Christmas tree bear some
fruit, even for the youngest. Let the birthdays be happily
observed, and the marriage anniversary joyfully remembered.

The home should be the first and chief place to promote a
love of flowers, vines, shrubs and trees by cultivating them,
and thus early develop a love for the beautiful in nature, in
art and still more in character. We need more heartily to
cultivate home affections, provide home enjoyments and foster
home courtesies. In the every day intercourse of home, there
should be a more sacred observance of the amenities of life
and a freer interchange of kindly feeling. As flowers seem

21

worthless to the thoughtless, so the morning and evening
salutations in the family may seem little in themselves, but
when fitly observed are mighty in their influence. As the
sunbeam is composed of myriads of minute rays, so the home
should be illumined and brightened by nature's richest hues
without and still more by winning smiles within, cordial greet-
ings, loving looks, gentle words, sweet laughter and nameless
little kindnesses. Such beauties of nature and art, such ameni-
ties and affections should be the sunshine of home. They
refresh and purify the social circle. Like the clinging vine,
they twine themselves around the heart, calling forth its purest
emotions and securing its most healthful activity. Such a
home is worthy the name Ordinance of Grod. Such a heaven
here will help prepare its members for the heaven above.
Such an ideal may be an inspiration towards its realization.

If parents combine to make the circle of home-life beautiful
without and within, they will sow the seeds of truth, kindness,
honesty, and fidelity in the hearts of their children from which
they may reap a harvest of happiness and virtue. The mem-
ory of a beautiful and happy home, and a sunny childhood is
one of the richest legacies parents can leave to their children.
The heart will never forget its hallowed influences. It is a
fountain of enjoyment, to which the lapse of years will only
add new sweetness. Such a memory is a constant inspiration
for good and restraint from evil. If taste and culture adorn
our homes, and grounds, and music adds its charms, our
children will find the healthful pursuits and pleasures of rural
homes more attractive than the pomp, and glare, and whirl
of city life. Such early occupations and enjoyments will
invest home life, and then school life and all ones future with
new interest and value, with new significance and joyousness.
For life is ever what we make it. We may \>y our blindness
or folly or sin live in a world of darkness and gloom, or we
may live in a world full of sunlight, and beauty, and joy, for
the world without always reflects the world within.

12. These Associations have awakened new interest in tree-
planting, both ornamental and economic. In answer to the
question what ornamental trees to plant, I have usually recom-
mended among our native trees the following, naming them in

22

the order of preference : The elm, maple, tulip, ash, linden or
basswood, hemlock, white oak, black walnut, and hickory.

The white ash deserves more favor both as an ornamental
and a timber tree. Combining lightness, strength, toughness,
elasticity -and beauty of grain in a rare degree, it is in great
and growing demand for farming tools, furniture, interior
finishing of houses and railroad cars, the construction of car-
riages, for oars and pulley blocks, and many other purposes.
The excellence of our ash is one secret of the preference given
abroad to American agricultural implements. It is hardy, will
bear the bleakest exposure, is a rapid grower and attains large
size, but will not thrive on poor lands. It is every way supe-
rior to the European ash, much as that has been cultivated and
lauded abroad.

Connecticut is rich in its variety of native trees, having
nearly sixty species, of which about forty are sizable for tim-
ber. The elm, when growing under favorable conditions, has
been pronounced " the most magnificent vegetable of the tem-
perate zone." The tulip tree or common white wood deserves
much greater favor as an ornamental tree. It is a rapid grower,
has a straight stem and attains large size. Taken from the
woods when ten or fifteen feet high, it is not likely to live, but
transplanted young from the nursery it proves thrifty and
hardy. It is a common mistake to select too old trees for
transplanting — so old that they must be beheaded. Not even
the elm ever developes its full symmetry when subjected to
such unnatural treatment. It is better to transplant all trees
so young that with complete roots and good care they can grow
without cropping.

Among imported trees the European larch should hold a
prominent place. It combines the three qualities of rapidity
of growth, symmetry of form and durability of timber. Mr.
Maro Hammond, of Vernon, covered a worn-out, unsightly,
gravelly hill in the rear of his home with a thousand larch, dur-
ing this spring of 1880. If these thrive, he is to set out a much
larger number next spring. John W. Nichols, of Branford,
plants a large number this year. Three thousand larch and
other exotics were set out in Clinton last .year, besides many
native trees. Some ten thousand larch trees were planted

23

last spring in Pomfret to reclaim exhausted hillsides. If these
experiments in recuperating sterile soils are successful, they
may lead to important economic results in addition to the
adornment given to fields now barren and unsightly. Grigor
says, "ISTo tree is so valuable as the larch in its fertilizing
effects arising from the richness of its foliage which it sheds
annually. The yearly deposit is very great ; the leaves remain
and are consumed on the spot where they drop." Trees also
enrich the soil by a curious chemistry which disintegrates even
the rocks, and transmutes their particles into forms of life and
beauty. The radicles and rootlets, in their under-ground labor-
atory, secrete acids which dissolve the very sands and stones.

In many positions groves are of great service as wind-breaks ;
even narrow strips of trees afford a shelter to fruit trees and to
various crops, as well as a shield to cattle from piercing winds.
Evergreens serve best for screens, as deciduous trees are leaf-
less when their shelter is most needed, especially for stock
and around farm buildings. The evergreens most suitable
for this purpose are the Norway spruce, white pine, Scotch
pine, and Austrian pine ; and next to these are the American
arbor vitas, hemlock, and spruce. Sheltered orchards are most
productive and less likely to lose their fruit prematurely by
violent winds, and the farmer with proper wind-screens con-
sumes less fuel in his house and less forage in his stables.

In some portions of Germany the law formerly required
every landholder to plant trees along his road frontage. Happy
would it be for us if the sovereigns of our soil would each
make such a law for himself. Happy, also, if the law of
usage, fashion, or interest here, as did the civil law there,
required that every young man before he married should
plant a wedding tree. In some of our Western States tree-
planting by the road-side is encouraged by a bounty from the
State treasury, and in the fields by both a bounty and exemp-
tion from taxation for a term of years. The law in Minnesota
provides that u every person planting, protecting and cultiva-
ting forest trees for three years, one-half mile or more along
any public highway, shall be entitled to receive for ten years
thereafter an annual bounty of two dollars for each half-mile
so planted and cultivated, to be paid out of the State treas-

24

ury ; but such bounty shall not be paid any longer than such
line of trees is maintained." I may be pardoned for repeating
a personal allusion. The maples which I planted, when a
mere boy, before the old homestead in Litchfield county, are
now beautiful and stately trees. As I have often said, they
have paid me a thousand-fold for the work they cost, and
added new charms to that beautiful spot, to which I count it a
privilege to make an annual visit. Among the memories of
my boyhood, no day has recurred with such frequency and
satisfaction as that then devoted to tree-planting. My interest
in this subject is due to this incident (or perhaps accident) of
my boyhood. I should be thankful if I could help put a sim-
ilar incident, and an equally grateful experience, into the child-
hood of our boys of to-day.

In tree-planting, the economic and ornamental, touch at so
many points that the cases are rare where they really diverge.
Nothing, for example, can add so much to the beauty and
attractiveness of our country roads as long avenues of fine
trees. One sees this beautifully illustrated in France, where, for
over a hundred miles on a stretch, the road is lined with
trees. In many ways the first Napoleon's interest in arbori-
culture proved a benefaction to France. No time should be
lost in securing the same grand attraction to the highways of
Connecticut. Growing on land otherwise running to waste,
such trees would yield most satisfactory returns. The shade
and beauty would be grateful to every traveler, but doubly so
to the owner and the planter, as the happy experience of many
Connecticut farmers can testify. A grand work in this direc-
tion is already well started. No class can contribute so much
to the adornment of our public roads as the farmers. They
have already in abundance the very best trees for the roadside,
such as the elm, maple, ash, American linden (or bass), oak,
and in some localities the walnut. The hard maple will thrive
in dry and gravelly soils, while the elm and red maple are
specially desirable for moist, low ground. As the maples
should be planted twenty-five feet apart, and the elms from
forty to fifty, pgplars or willows or trees growing rapidly from
scions, may be^placed between, to be cut down when their
statelier neighbors require the room for their full development.

25

Tree-planting is fitted to give a needful lesson of forethought
to the juvenile mind. Living only in the present and for the
present, youth sow, too often, only where they can quickly
reap. A meager crop soon in hand, outweighs a golden
harvest long in maturing. They should learn to forecast the
future as the condition* of wisdom. Arboriculture is a disci-
pline in foresight — it is always planting for the future, and
sometimes for the distant future. Says Washington Irving,
" There is something nobly simple and pure in such a taste for
trees. It argues a sweet and generous nature to have this
strong friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest.
There is a serene majesty in woodland scenery that enters into
the soul, dilates and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclina-
tions. There is a grandeur of thought connected with this
heroic line of husbandry. It is worthy of liberal and free-
born and aspiring men. He who plants an oak, looks forward
to future ages and plants for posterity. He cannot expect to
enjoy its shelter, but he exults in the idea that the acorn
which he has buried in the earth shall grow up into a lofty pile,
,and shall keep on flourishing and increasing and benefiting
mankind long after he has ceased to tread his paternal fields."
It was the trees of his own planting at Sunnyside-on-the-
Hudson, more than the beauty of the surrounding landscape,
that led Irving to say, "After all my wanderings, I return to
this spot with a heartfelt preference for it over all others in the
world." It was the simple beauty he had created at Marsh-
field, — the grassy lawns, the shaded approaches, the hundreds
of trees of his planting, — that bound Daniel Webster so
strongly to that sequestered spot. The charm of Abbotsford,
the grand Mecca of Scotland, comes mainly from its beautiful
ivy and shrubbery and the thousands of trees planted by the
hand of its illustrious proprietor. Says Sir Walter Scott,
" My heart clings to this place I have created. There is scarce
a tree in it that does not owe its being to me. Once well
planted, a tree will grow when you are sleeping, and it is
almost the only thing that needs no tending."

Over three million dollars have been expended in the last
ten years in Connecticut, in building and repairing school
houses. Wise and necessary as was this expenditure, had one-

26

hundredth part of this sum been spent annually in planting
trees and adorning the school grounds, a still better result
would have been accomplished in cultivating the taste of our
youth, leading them to study and admire our noble trees, and
realize that they are the grandest and most beautiful products
of nature and form the finest drapery that adorns this earth in
all lands. Thus taught, they will wish to plant and protect
trees, and find in their own happy experience that there is a
peculiar pleasure in their parentage, whether forest, fruit or
ornamental — a pleasure that never cloys, but grows with their
growth. Such offspring they will watch with pride, as every
year new beauties appear. Like grateful children, they bring
rich filial returns and compensate a thousand-fold for the trou-
ble they cost. This love of trees early implanted in the school
and fostered in the home, will be sure to make our youth prac-
tical arborists. They should learn that trees have been the ad-
miration of the greatest and best men in all ages. The ancients
understood well the beauty and hygienic value of trees. The
Hebrews almost venerated the Palm. It was the chosen sym-
bol of Judea on their coins and graven on the doors of the
temple as the sacred sign of justice. The Cedar of Lebanon
was the pride of the Jews and became to them the emblem
of strength and beauty as is seen in Ezekiel's description of a
Cedar in Lebanon with fair branches and with a shadowing
shroud and of a high stature and his top was among the thick
boughs. The height was exalted above all the trees of the
field and his boughs were multiplied and his branches became
long. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his
branches, nor any tree in the garden of God like unto him in
beauty.

The Egyptians, Greeks and Eomans were proficients in tree
planting. Hence Thebes, Memphis, Athens, Carthage, Kome,
Pompeii and Herculaneum, as their very ruins still show, had
each their shaded streets or parks. Two thousand years ago,
it was the ambition of the richest Eomans to maintain a rural
home in or near the city as it is of the wealthy Londoner,
Viennese, or Berliner to-day, and their ancient villas were most
lavishly adorned. The Paradise of the Persians was filled with
blossoming trees and long lines of roses. This taste for beauti-

27

ful gardens was transplanted from Persia to Greece, and the
greatest Greek Philosophers held their schools in beautiful
gardens and groves. The devastation of parks, the destruction
of shade trees, the neglect of public streets and private grounds,
the decay of rural tastes and the utter slight of home adorn-
ments were clearer proofs of the great relapse to barbarism than
the vandalism which merely destroyed the proud monuments
of classic art and literature.

In tree planting, the beginning only is difficult. It is the
first step that costs — at least it costs effort and persuasion to set
this thing on foot — but that step once taken, others are sure to
follow. On this account, I have tried various devices to get
our vouth initiated in tree-planting. In 1876 an effort was made
to promote u Centennial Tree-Planting " by the offer of prizes,
which proved successful far beyond my expectation. Many
youth in Connecticut whose first experience as little arborists
was prompted by those prizes, have become so interested in
this pleasant work that they have continued it each subsequent
spring. In 1878 the accident of the blowing down of a famous
willow led me to offer them several thousand scions. Beau-
tiful as that exotic is, I was careful to state that it is not com-
parable to many of our majestic natives, saying in a circular
then addressed to our boys: "Because the main tug is at the
start, on account of the inertia of ignorance and indifference,
that start should be made easy. I should greatly prefer to
start five thousand elms or maples this year in Connecticut, if
it could be done as easily as my five thousand willow scions
seem likely to be stuck in the ground. This proposal is made
as a mere beginning in tree planting, sure to lead to something
more and better."

These and other plans have manifestly increased the interest
of our youth in arboriculture through the State, There is
nothing more ennobling than the consciousness of doing
something for future generations, something which shall prove
a growing benefaction in coming years. Tree-planting is an
easy way of perpetuating one's memory long after he has
passed away. The poorest can in this way provide himself
with a monument grander than the loftiest shaft of chiseled
stone, which may suggest duty to the living while it commemo-

28

rates the dead. Such associations grow in interest from year to
year and from generation to generation. It will yield a rich
harvest to future generations, if we can now stimulate a revival
of arboriculture throughout our State. I confess to a grateful
pride in the fact that something in this line has been recently
accomplished in nearly every town of Connecticut. If this
work is duly extended, our whole State will be transformed
into a series of beautiful villages. Nothing can add such a
charm to our country roads as long and magnificent avenues of
stately trees,

The benefits that may accrue to our country from the dis-
cussion of tree-planting, were strikingly exhibited two hundred
and fourteen years ago, when Sir John Evelyn published his
celebrated work, entitled, u Sylva ; or, a Discourse on Forest
Trees and the Propagation of Timber." It was at once
received with great public favor, and honored with royal com-
mendation. He had remarkable success in awakening general
interest in sylviculture. He was one of the founders of the
Koyal Society, and wrote this book at its special request, and
that society has originated few books in the last two hundred
years more useful than this which still survives in its grand
results, although his other works on painting, sculpture, archi-
tecture, and medals have long since been forgotten. In many
ways England has recognized her great obligations to the man
who worked so lovingly and effectively for the good of his
countrymen.

Disraeli, in his u Curiosities of Literature," fittingly says :
" Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his Sylva, his
name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The
voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II, pre-
fixed to one of the later editions, in which he says : c I need
not acquaint your Majesty how many millions of timber trees,
besides infinite others, have been planted throughout your vast
dominions at the instigation of this work, because your Majesty
has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.'
Surely, while Britain retains her situation among the nations
of Europe, the Sylva of Evelyn will endure with her triumph-
ant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius
of the nation, and who, casting a prophetic eye towards the

29

age in which we live, contributed to secure our sovereignty of
the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been con-
structed with the oaks which the genius of John Evelyn
planted."

13. The economic bearings of this subject claim attention.
The money wisely expended for the adornment and improve-
ment of a town is a good investment. It pays in many ways.
Such improvements help to retain in a town its wealthy and
public-spirited citizens, whom a narrow and unprogressive pol-
icy would repel. Dr. Bodwell, who was long a resident in
England, took a deep interest in this subject, when professor in
the Theological Seminary of Hartford, and after journeying
widely through Connecticut, said, "This village improvement
all over our State is of great promise in a variety of ways.
One most valuable result will be that a larger proportion of
the enterprising young men will stay at home and cultivate
the farms and make it a good thing too, with their intelligence
and improved methods, and then the maidens will stay of
course, and weddings will multiply, and the old homes will
again be full of rosy children as in 'the ages past,' and the
commonwealth will make a new and noble start in the career
of riches and honor. In traveling over the State, one is con-
stantly greeted with new surprises in the discovery of charm-
ing landscape pictures, with the finest possible sights for delight-
ful residences; such as merchant princes might envy. Eng-
land in its natural features is not comparable to Connecticut in
wide variety of the picturesque and romantic. How exceed-
ingly beautiful our little Commonwealth is destined to become
at a future day, by the culture which is every day extending
under the lead of village improvement associations, and in the
erection of elegant country seats, is a thought continually sug-
gested."

In the history of our towns public improvements and growth
often stand related as cause and effect. Immigration from
New York is one source of the increase of these towns. Since
the solution of the long-vexed problem of rapid transit by the
elevated railroads, Connecticut has the opportunity of inviting
or repelling desirable residents in greatly increasing numbers.
Growing rapidly as New York now is, where shall its swelling

30

throngs of business men find their homes ? A liberal spirit
will invite wealth and population in still larger measure to our
borders. The new comers from New York city to the shore
line and other progressive towns are the friends of public
improvements, because these are investments which ultimately
enrich a community. A penurious policy is penny-wise and
pound-foolish. It defeats its own aim of saving, and results in
final deterioration and loss. Men of affluence and culture
shun a narrow-minded and illiberal community. A good name
tends to enrich a town as well as an individual, while a bad
one may impoverish both.

14. There is no rural improvement more practical and valuable
than the recovery of once fertile lands now lost to tillage. The
waste lands of New England and the Atlantic states are already
very extensive. They consist of, first, exhausted pasture land
once arable, second, rough, rocky hills and hill-sides, formerly
good grazing ground, but now so overrun with hard-hack or
other useless bushes as to be worthless for pasturage, third,
swamps, marshes, moors and bogs, and fourth, sand-barrens.
Except the third class here named, nearly all these lands have
been made barren by our improvidence and carelessness. My
special aim has been to encourage the recuperation of such
lands by tree planting.

For the reclamation of our pastures and waste lands aban-
doned to hard-hack, sumac, and other worthless brush, the
European larch deserves to become a favorite. A native of
the Alps, Apennines, of the Tyrol and Carpathian Mountains, it
is a very hardy tree, and at home in a variety of well-drained
soils, especially on rough, rocky, or gravelly ground, and the
most rugged ravines. There are in our State large tracts of
bleak hill-sides and mountain declivities or summits exhausted
and now practically worthless, where the larch, thickly planted,
would soon choke out all brush, and weeds. As an orna-
mental tree it grows finely even in deep and rich loam, but its
extraordinary qualities for timber may be impaired when grown
on the rich prairies of the West or the best lands of the East.
When raised under right conditions, it combines the two qual-
ities of rapidity of growth and durability of wood more than
any other tree. More than two thousand years ago this wood

31

was in high favor with the Eomans for the building of^ships
and bridges. Julius Cassar spoke strongly of its strength and
durability.

I heard a lumber-man in Yenice say that its durability was
amply attested there, as most of the houses of the city are built
upon larch piles, many of which, though in use for centuries,
show no signs of decay. In a large Doge's palace, BOW used
as a hotel, he showed me some very ancient larch window-
casings which are still sound. For gondola posts in the canals
adjoining the houses the larch is preferred. In wharves and
many other positions in England, where there is an alternation
of wet and dry with the tide, the larch has stood this most try-
ing test far better than oak. In England it is regarded as the
best timber for railway ties. Monville says : " In Switzerland,
the larch, as the most durable of woods, is preferred for shin-
gles, fences, and vine-props. These vine-props remain fixed
for years, and see crop after crop of vines bear their fruit and
perish without showing any symptoms of decay. Props of sil-
ver fir would not last more than ten years." Evelyn says:
" It makes everlasting spouts and pent-houses, which need
neither pitch nor painting to preserve them." Michie affirms
that " For out-door work it is the most durable of all descrip-
tions of wood. I have known larch posts that have stood for
nearly fifty years." Professor Sargent expresses the opinion
that " For posts it will equal in durability our red cedar, while
in the power to hold nails it is greatly its superior." The chest-
nut railway sleeper, secreting an acid which corrodes iron, loses
its power to hold the spikes in about seven years, though the
tie itself may not so soon seriously rot. The larch, while -it
holds iron as firmly as oak, unlike the latter, does not corrode
iron.

The president of the Illinois Central Kailway, having exam-
ined the vast planted forests of larch in Europe and learned its
remarkable fitness for railway ties, offers to transport the young
plants free of charge to any point on their lines or leased lines,
provided they are to be planted in the vicinity of the same.
It is, however, an experiment which time alone can determine,
whether the larch will retain its durability when planted in
the level, deep, vegetable mould of the prairies, with their

82

retentive sub-soil. That it will grow there rapidly and luxu-
riantly is amply proved, but its history for many centuries
shows that elevated lands suit it better than low grounds, and
side-hills and mountain slopes better than flats. In the rich
river flats of Kew Gardens and in the vicinity of London the
larch does not thrive. The specimens found in that remarka-
ble collection of all known trees are puny. The Kew arborist
informed me that in the two hundred and seventy acres appro-
priated to the arboretum, no spot had been found suited to the
larch.

No other tree has been planted so extensively in Scotland.
It attains maturity long before the oak, and serves well for
nearly all purposes for which oak is used. Larch trees thirty
years old are sometimes sold for fifteen dollars each, while oaks
of the same age are not worth three dollars each. As the
larch grows erect, with short and slender laterals, it may be
planted much thicker than the oak. According to Loudon,
ten acres of larch will furnish as much ship timber as seventy-
five acres of oak. Its large timber yield per acre is one source
of its popularity in Britain. It was first planted on the estate of
the Duke of Athole, in 1741. Some stately specimens nearly
one hundred and -forty years old may be seen near the cathe-
dral at Dunkeld. Mr. McGregor, the duke's forester, informed
me that on this one estate have been planted over twenty-
seven millions of larch trees, covering over sixteen thousand
acres, some of which was formerly worth only from one to two
shillings per acre. Dr. James Brown says he has seen matured
crops of larch of sixty-five years' standing sold for from $750
to. $2,000 per acre, when the land was originally worth only
from $2 to $4 per acre.

The reclamation of marshes by drainage, both surface and
subsoil, has been carried on for so long a period and on so
broad a scale and with such grand results as to need no de-
tailed discussion here. England, Ireland and Holland, to
name no other countries of Europe, contain millions of acres
of such land, now reclaimed and exceedingly fertile. Even
lakes from ten to fifteen miles in length have been drained.
In 1848 was completed the draining of the Lake of Haarlem
in Holland. The lands thus recovered have since been sold

33

by the Government for nearly $3,500,000, or about $80 per
acre. The success of this grand experiment has prompted
others, like the draining of the Zuid Plas — a lake covering
nearly 12,000 acres, and the great work now progressing to
drain an arm of the Sheld, which will recover some 35,000
acres. Encouraged by the results of these enterprises, the
Netherlandish engineers now advocate the stupendous project
of draining the great salt water basin of the Zuiderzee — an
inland sea which covers 1,300,000 acres. The Italians have
nearly completed the work of enlarging and deepening the
tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius 1800 years ago, to drain
Lake Celano. 30,000 workmen were employed on this sub-
tearanean passage for eleven years. Though this remarkable
undertaking — the wonder of that age — was successful, in the
following reign it fell into disrepair and continued to be neg-
lected for centuries. It is one of many proofs of the revived
energy and enterprise of the present generation, rivaling their
historic ancestors, that they have restored and surpassed this
old Eoman work. This new tunnel, more than four miles in
length and costing over six millions of dollars, will ultimately
recover for agricultural occupation forty-two thousand acres of
most fertile land. Already some 36,000 acres of rich arable
land have been reclaimed, on which the crops yield a profit of
from thirty to thirty-six per cent.

While it is interesting to know the extent and success of
lake drainage in the old world, in our country with millions of
acres of virgin soil, such expenditures would be unwise. But
in New England and the Atlantic States there are large tracts
of bogs and swamps that may be easily and economically
reclaimed by drainage. The hygienic advantages of stopping
malarious exhalations from stagnant pools would be clear gain.
This practice has been common in Europe for a long period.
When the works now in progress in Hungary are completed,
that country will have over a million acres of swamp land
drained and brought under cultivation. Many thousand acres
have thus been recently improved in Italy and similar works
are now progressing in France and elsewhere in Europe. Much
has lately been done in the same direction on our New Jersey
sea coast, along the shore of Lake Michigan and somewhat in

34

the New England States. Several successful experiments in
swamp-drainage and securing land from overflow have been
tried in California, thus already improving some 200,000 acres
of land on our Pacific coast. The diking in and reclaiming the
salt marshes along the seashore is worthy of increased attention.
In Marshfield, Massachusetts, over 1400 acres of salt marsh
have been already greatly improved by shutting off the tides
of the ocean, at a cost of over $30,000. If the success expected
attends this experiment, it will deserve to be repeated on a
broad scale along our seashore. The improvement of moors
and wet lands by spreading layers of sand is too familiar to
need description. Tile drainage, though but recently intro-
duced in this country, is rapidly growing in favor. Though
more expensive than surface drainage, it produces far better
results. In this way large tracts of wet land have been
recently improved, especially in the Western States. The
statistics from a single State will indicate the general progress
in this direction. In 1876 less than five million feet of tiles
were sold in Illinois : in 1877 over fourteen million feet were
sold.

The extent of soil depletion in many of the Southern
States, according to Dr. Tichenor of Alabama, is " painful
and humiliating. The fields of Middle Georgia were once
the richest cotton lands of the South. After wearing them
out, the planters went to Alabama, and there repeated the
same process of exhaustion. Now the line of greatest pro-
ductionlhas receded from the seaboard to Texas. Those who
thus'carelessly strip the soil of its wealth are traitors to those
who come after them. This ignorant plundering of the soil is
an evil which threatens our national stability. One cause of
the Jong continued fertility of China and Japan is the care
with which every element of the soil is husbanded."

The practicability and even the possibility of reclaiming the
sand-barrens of the Atlantic States is so generally doubted,
that it is needful to show what has been done in this direction
under conditions the most unfavorable and where it was confi-
dently predicted nothing could be made to grow. The feasi-
bility of reclaiming our barren wastes, is proved by many facts
abroad and at home. Our Atlantic sand plains were once cov-

35

ered with forests. The now bare, white sand hills of Province-
town were described by the Pilgrims, on their landing there,
as well-wooded. The sand hills on the coast of Prussia were
formerly wooded, down to the water's edge, and "it was only
in the last century, says Geo. P. Marsh, " that in consequence
of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands.
King Frederick William I. when in pressing need of money,
sold the forests of the Freische Nehrung for 200,000 thalers,
and the trees were all felled. Financially the operation was a
temporary success, but in the lasting material effects, the State
received irreparable injury and would now gladly expend mil-
lions to restore the forests again. The dunes of the Nether-
lands were clothed with trees until after the Eoman invasion.
The old geographers speak of vast forests extending here to
the very brink of the sea, and the drifting coast dunes have
assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvi-
dence of man. The history of the dunes of Michigan is the
same. Forty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabi-
ted, they were generally covered with a thick growth of trees,
and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on
the land side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the
trees had been cut or turned up by the roots."

The sand dunes of Denmark cover over 160,000 acres —
those of Prussia 110,000 — those of the single province of Gas-
cony in France over 200,000, and in all Europe the drifting
sands, according to Pannewitz, cover 7,000,000 acres. Says
Marsh : " There is no question that most of this waste is capa-
ble of reclamation by simple tree planting, and no mode of
physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized
governments than this. There are often serious objections to
extensive forest planting on soils capable of being otherwise
made productive, but they do not apply to sand wastes which,
until they are covered by woods, are not only a useless incum-
brance, but a source of serious danger to all human improve-
ments in the neighborhood of them."

This is a subject of practical .interest to us because we have
along the Atlantic coast as at Cape Cod, in Connecticut, at some
points in New Jersey, and other Atlantic States, on the shores of
Florida, on the Gulf Coast, on the eastern shore of Lake Mich-

36

igan and elsewhere, long tracts of drifting sand that have done
serious local damage. To stop this extension, considerable
expenditures have already been made in several States to cover
their surface with a vegetable growth.

But this reclamation of barrens and sand dunes has been
carried on most extensively and successfully in France. These
sand hills or dunes as they are called, stretched over a hundred
miles along the coast of the Bay of Biscay, between the rivers
Adour and Gironde. Banging from 180 to 320 feet above
the level of the sea, they are composed of white silicious
sand rounded and reduced to minute grains by trituration.
These grains are still too heavy to be borne aloft by the winds
and scattered afar like the ashes of volcanoes. On the Atlantic
shore of France, the prevailing and most violent winds are from
the west and southwest. Hence at low tide, the sands dried by
the sun and the wind were driven as along an inclined plane
up the slopes which descend seaward and thus formed these
growing dunes, which moving inland created great desolation.

Nearly a century ago Bremontier published a memoir on the
reclamation of sand dunes. Under the patronage of the French
Government, he successfully introduced the planting of the
maritime pine along the Atlantic coast of Gascony. These
plantations have been perseveringly continued from that time
to the present, and now cover over 100,000 acres in that single
district. Not only has this wide area been reclaimed and made
productive soil, but a still greater extent of fertile land has
been rescued from the destruction threatened by the advancing
sand hills. In speaking of the monument erected to Bremontier
in this now stately forest, Marsh says : " He deserves to be
reckoned among the greatest benefactors of the race."

In planting the dunes, a barrier along the shore was found
necessary at first to protect the young trees from the rolling
sands which otherwise would bury them. A double line of
paling was erected parallel to the shore and a hundred meters
from high water mark — the second line being a hundred meters
further inland. This paling is made of planks sharpened at
the lower end and driven into the sand. Spaces of an inch
between the planks allow sand enough to pass through to bank
up equally on both sides and relieve somewhat the force of the

37

wind by allowing it to pass through these openings. As the
paling is covered by the sands the planks are raised one at a
time. A movable frame with a long lever mounted on run-
ners, so that it can be slid along the top of the fence, and
having pinchers or a clamp and chain, is easily carried and
operated by one man.

The total cost of planting and protecting the pines has some-
times been as much as $40 per acre. The timber of this plan-
tation has long been a source of profit, affording both resin and
wood. France now draws an annual revenue of 130,000 francs
from the resinous products of these forests. But in this case
the greater profit comes from the consequent protection of the
adjoining country from the encroaching sands, which had for-
merly sterilized fertile regions and buried thriving villages.
M. Samanos says that " in all France nearly one million acres
(400,000 hectares) of desolate land, supposed to be doomed to
everlasting sterility, have been reclaimed, and these savage des-
erts are now stocked with maritime pines which will become
for the country a fruitful source of wealth, and supply some
day the wants of the whole of France."

A liberal appropriation is now made annually for the con-
tinuance of this work. The whole extent of dunes in France
that remains to be planted is nearly 80,000 hectares, or about
200,000 acres. A small subsidy is given by the State to those
who own and plant them, but most of this land belongs to the
State and is managed entirely by the Forest department.

These successful experiments, conducted on so broad a scale
and for so long a period, clearly prove the practicability of
arresting and utilizing sand drifts by the plantation of trees.
What has been done abroad on the most unpromising beach
sands may surely be accomplished under the more favorable
conditions of our Atlantic barrens, not necessarily by planting
the same trees or by the same methods, but by those plans
which a study of the local climate and conditions in each case
will suggest. The young plants in France have been sheltered
at the outset by sowing with the pine seeds certain hardy
weeds, herbs and grasses like the yellow lupin, which gave a
temporary shade and protection, and by their decay helped
somewhat to enrich the soil. Some arborists affirm that oats

38

or rye, or our blue lupin which thrives in dry soil, will serve
the same purpose on our barrens. I have not space to detail
the kindred methods of recuperating sand barrens in other
countries of Europe.

I can only name a few illustrations of the extent of this
work. Hummel attributes the devastation of the Karst, the
high plateau lying north of Trieste — until recently one of the
most parched and barren wastes in Europe — to the felling of
its woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice. The
Austrian government is now making energetic and thus far
successful efforts for the reclamation of this desolate waste,
having planted over half a million of young trees and sown
great quantities of seed. In the vicinity of Antwerp less than
fifty years ago was a vast desolate plan. Looking to-day in
the same direction from the spire of the cathedral, one can see
nothing but a forest, whose limits seem lost in the horizon.
Forest plantations have transformed these barren lands into
fertile fields. On the Adriatic, Baltic, Mediterranean as well
as the Biscayan coasts the disastrous encroachments of the sea
have been checked by forest plantations. Extensive plains,
once barren sands south of Berlin, about Odessa and north of
the Black Sea and vast steppes in Russia, are now well wooded.
R. Douglass & Sons, of Waukegan, Illinois, who have been the
pioneers in promoting economic tree-planting in the West,
began four years ago the experiment of reclaiming barren sand
ridges near the shore of Lake Michigan, trying pitch pine,
white pine, Austrian pine and Scotch pine. Here, as on Cape
Cod, the Scotch pine proved the best for reclaiming sandy
barrens. With these facts from abroad and at home it cannot
be denied that even the poorest soils of the Atlantic States
may be reclaimed.

All sand wastes are by no means alike. Trees which will
grow luxuriantly on one will pine away and die on another.
The climate, too, varies, as well as the soil. The soil of Cape
Cod and Nantucket is well fitted for the maritime pine, where
it has been amply tried. It grows well for a season or two,
but is sure to winter-kill in a few years. It suffers from the
severity of the winter in Holland and Germany. Sea spray
and saline constituents in the soil or air are fatal to some trees

39

and favorable to others. A knowledge of the natural growths
of each vicinity will favor adaptation to local conditions.

Though dry at the top, sand dunes and most sand plains
and hillocks are moist a little below the surface, by reason of
evaporization from the lower strata, retention of rain water
and capillary attraction. The latter cause depends upon the
size of the grain of sand. The finer the grain the greater is its
capacity for receiving moisture and the longer is the moisture
retained.

As this scheme of recuperating sand wastes will be regarded
as chimerical by many who have not investigated the subject, I
will cite facts found near home. Having made a trip on Cape
Cod, expressly to inspect their reclaimed lands and confer with
the intelligent tree planters there, who are the American pioneers
in this work, I will summarize briefly the information gained
from them. The amount of land planted with trees in Barnstable
county is about 10,000 acres. Before the trees were planted
these well-nigh worthless lands could be purchased at from 25
to 50 cents per acre. I was interested in the plantations of
John Doane, of Orleans, the oldest living silviculturist in
America (now 89 years of age), who has planted 170 acres.
He has sold planted lands for $14 per acre, not worth over 50
cents before planting, which he considers a good investment.
But the best pay has been his enjoyment of this work, so
manifestly growing with the growth of these trees. The
forests he has created have long been to him a source of pride
and satisfaction, greatly improving the surroundings of his
place, and thus helping to brighten and prolo'ng his years.
John Ken rick, of South Orleans said: "My experiments in
tree-planting have been made on over a hundred acres now
covered with trees from one to thirty-five years old, chiefly
pitch pine. I am now trying Scotch and Corsican pine and
European larch. My first aim has been to cover my worn out
lands with beauty and verdure, and it has proved a successful
and economic experiment. The seed of the pitch pine is worth
from one to two dollars a pound, the higher price being in the
end the cheapest. Fresh seeds carefully gathered are as sure to
vegetate as corn. I have tried every method of tree-planting,
transplanting trees from the smallest to those that are two feet

40

high. This is a costly plan, but may be adopted when one
wishes to save time, or desires a few trees as a wind-break or
otherwise. In transplanting trees immediately from my own
nursery to the fields, my favorite time is just as the bads begin
to start in the spring. I have planted seeds both with a plan-
ter and by hand. On our light sands a man and a boy will
plant three acres in a day — dropping six seeds in a hill, it will
take about one-half a pound of seed to the acre. This is rny
favorite method and is more satisfactory in results though
more costly than that of using the plough and planter. When
the evergreens are two feet high I would thin them, leaving
one thrifty plant in each hill. I do not trim till they get large
and then cut off only the dead branches."

Tully Crosby, of Brewster, said : " In our small town about
1500 acres of old waste land have been planted with pitch
pine. The Norway pine has not proved a success with us.
Many old fields bought for fifty cents per acre and planted
with pine twenty-five years ago, are now worth from $10 to
$20 per acre. The pines grow well for twenty-five or thirty
years and when cut off a second crop springs up immediately
and this crop does better than the first. The pitch pine takes
root and grows on our barren beach sand where no soil is per-
ceptible. Our people are now planting trees every year. I
have recently planted twelve acres. Two years ago I cut off a
lot planted thirty years since and the land is now full of young
pines scattered by the first growth. A man with a two-horse
team and planting machine can plant ten acres in a day and
three pounds of seed will do the whole."

E. Higgins, of Eastham, said : " Thirty years ago twenty
acres of condemned tillage land, worth one dollar per acre, was
planted with pitch pine. The present value of this land is $15
per acre. In 1870, 225 acres more of the same sort of land
was thus planted, the present value of which is $8 per acre.
About 150 acres of sandy land, utterly barren and not worth
fifty cents to the acre have been planted, the present value of
which is $7 per acre." John G. Thompson, of North Truxo,
says : " About 650 acres have been planted in this town. The
price of pitch pine seed for the last few years has been $1.50
per pound. Thirty years ago land in this town could be

41

bought for tree planting at twenty-five cents per acre ; now
the same kind of barren land sells for $2 per acre for tree-
planting. I find the expense of planting the pines to be $2.25
per acre."

S. P. Phinney, of Barnstable, said : " Large tracts of worn-
out lands in this country, that were worth comparatively
nothing, have been planted from the seed of the pitch pine.
These experiments have proved successful. I know of no way
in which the light sandy lands in this section can be made so
valuable as by planting the pitch pine. Our experience proves
that the cultivation of forest trees is feasible and profitable in
New England seaport towns. In 1845 I planted in this town
a ten acre lot with pitch pine seed, much as corn is planted,
dropping three seeds in a hill and covering them with half an
inch of soil. To-day many of these trees will gird more than
a man's body. Hundreds of acres in this section are being
planted annually."

We have a great Sahara in Connecticut less than ten miles
from New Haven, produced by improvidence and neglect.
The local traditions tell us that the sand-blow covering so
large an area in the towns of North Haven and Wallingford
was once finely wooded. Here and there clumps of low pines
and birches, the lone relics of a former growth, still resist the
drifting sands. So general is the conviction, that this sand-
blow is utterly irreclaimable, that it has long since been aban-
doned to hopeless sterility. I shall be happily disappointed
if my plan for utilizing it is not regarded by many farmers as
visionary and impracticable. But the feasibility of reclaiming
such wastes is proved by many facts. The cost of reclaiming
the sand barrens on Cape Cod has been small — from three to
five dollars per acre, but the profit has been satisfactory to the
planters. The best time for planting the pine seeds is as early
in the spring as the frost permits. The work is done by hand
or by a seed-planter, and in rows about as thick as corn is
ordinarily planted. On the Cape Cod barrens there was no
vegetation, except a little moss, low poverty grass, so-called,
and in some cases light beach grass.

Experiments are now in progress to fix the dunes or sand
hills which threaten the Suez Canal by planting the maritime

42

pine and other trees. I visited the celebrated forest of Fon-
tainbleau in France, which covers an area of sixty-four square
miles. The soil of this wide tract is composed entirely of
sand and apparently as dry as the sand plains of Wallingford,
Conn. Jules Clare, a student of forest science of world-wide
fame, says, " the sand here forms ninety-eight per cent, of the
earth, and it is almost without water; it would be a drifting
desert but for the trees growing and artificially propagated
upon it.'1

What has been done with signal success at Fontainbleau
in Gascony and many other provinces of France, as well as in
other European countries and on Cape Cod, shows the practi-
cability of reclaiming the worst deserts that can be found in
our Atlantic States. Many other facts might be cited were it
necessary, both from home and foreign fields, to prove the
feasibility of this plan of reclaiming sterile lands. If one is to
be commended who makes two blades of grass grow where but
one grew before, how much more the farmer who makes forests
thrive where nothing now grows.

The question is still often asked, will it pay the average
farmer to plant trees ? Certainly not, if early profit is essen-
tial. The answer depends on various circumstances, such as
the size of one's farm, its soil and situation. But on an ordi-
nary farm of from sixty to one hundred acres arid upwards, I
answer yes. If you are looking ahead and seeking an invest-
ment for future profit, "trees will make dollars, for they will
grow in waste places where nothing else can be profitably
cultivated. A soil too thin and rough for cereals may be
favorable for trees. Hillsides and plains exhausted and worn
out by the plow have often been reclaimed by planting forests.
Eavines too steep for cultivation are the favorite seats of tim-
ber, and wherever a crevice is found in a rocky ledge, the root
of a tree will burrow and spread, taking a hold so firm as
to defy the storm, and acting mechanically disintegrate the
rock and change its constituent elements into useful products.
By the road-side, the river-bank, along the brook, and on the
overhanging cliff, a tree may be always earning wealth for its
owners. In no way can we ultimately enrich a State more
than by planting the choicest trees on our exhausted and un-

43

productive lands. In such situations, forests will yield a large
percentage of profit. This is a duty we owe to ourselves and
to our children.

George Peabody, who did so much to encourage schools and
learning, originated the motto, so happily illustrated by his
own munificent gifts to promote education: "Education — the
debt of the present to future generations." We owe it to our
children to leave our lands and towns the better for our tillage,
and we wrong both ourselves and them if our fields are impov-
erished by our improvidence. But much as foresight is ad-
mired when its predictions are realized and its achievements
made, all history too plainly tells that the mass of men are not
easily persuaded to provide for exigencies far in the future.

Though the profit from tree-planting is remote, the pleasure
is immediate. The sour and selfish soul may say, " Posterity
has done nothing for me, and I will do nothing for posterity."
But every effort to start agencies whose benign influence shall
long endure, gives a glad inspiration and a conscious elevation
of character.

15. The improvement of the surroundings of railway stations
may well enlist the efforts of these associations. The railroad
depots in America are often made repulsive by neglect or by
the accumulation of discarded and decaying sleepers and other
unsightly rubbish, while those in Switzerland, France, Ger-
many and England are always neatly kept and usually adorned
with shrubs, flowers, or their beautiful English or German ivy,
sometimes covering the station-house with its dense garniture
of foliage. The Pennsylvania Central Railroad, at the stations
west of Philadelphia, is following this worthy European exam-
ple. The beautiful little parks at Pornfret and Stonington
depots in Connecticut, and those at Kingston, Ehode Island,
and at North Con way and Plymouth, New Hampshire, show
how simply and inexpensively our railroad stations may be
made attractive. Parks and gardens are a proof and product
of civilization, and are an index of the wealth and culture of
any community. In the European countries above named, the
Railway managers make it a part of the regular duty of the
station-masters to adorn the surrounding grounds. There is a
generous rivalry among these agents, who become justly proud

44

of their railway gardening and sometimes find their gain
from the sale of bouquets to passengers. In striking contrast
with these adornments is the slatternliness disfiguring our de-
pots, as well described by D. Or. Mitchell. " There are many
charming suburban retreats near New York city, to which the
occupant must wade his way through all manner of filthiness
and disorderly debris, making his landing as it were in the
very dung- heap of the place. Is there no remedy for this ?
Must we always confront the town with its worst side fore-
most? To make a township attractive, the approach to it
must be attractive. Every village station wants its little out-
lying Green to give character and dignity to the new approach.
In nine out of ten of way-side towns, such space could be
easily secured, easily held in reserve, easily made attractive ;
and if there was no room for a broad expanse of sward, at
least there might be planted some attractive copse of evergreens
or shrubbery, to declare by graceful type the rural pride of the
place. First impressions count for a great deal — whether in
our meeting with a woman or with a village. Slipshoddiness
is bad economy in towns as in people. Every season there is a
whirl of citizens, tired of city heats and costs, traversing the
country in half hope of being wooed to some summer home,
where the trees and the order invite tranquillity and promise
enjoyment. A captivating air about a village station will
count for very much in the decision."

16. Among the minor aims of Eural Improvement Associa-
tions, are the providing of rustic seats under the shades for the
comfort of pedestrians, pleasantly suggesting neighborly kind-
ness and courtesy ; setting up watering troughs for horses at
convenient points where from adjacent hillsides never failing
springs invite and facilitate this improvement ; furnishing plans
for rural architecture, and for gates and fences, or securing
hedge-rows in room of fences, or, better still, in many villages
combining to remove all fences and visibly dividing lines, so
that the private grounds seem to unite with the way-side in one
large lawn; the suggestion of the neutral tints for dwellings
and outhouses in place of the glaring white hitherto so com-
mon ; arrest of stray cattle, for strolling cattle usually are and
always ought to be outlawed ; preventing nuisances, one of these

45

is the tearing up the turf fronting a dwelling house by incon-
siderate road-menders. There is ample room for the needful
work of the scraper and the hoe without making unsightly cuts
and gutters in front of residences. Painting advertisements on
the rocks by the myriad nostrum makers is a nuisance that
should be prohibited by law. The same may be said of the
encroachments made upon the highway every time the stone-
wall or fence boundary is rebuilt. The whole town should
show an interest in preventing such curtailment of its road-
ways. A Kural Improvement Association can develop a pub-
lic sentiment which will of itself correct these evils without
occasioning any neighborhood strifes or alienations. In this
matter the interest of one is the interest of all. The motto of
the Swiss Confederacy, " One for all and all for one," is the
true motto for the several districts and for all the people of a
town. Hence the term Rural is preferable to that of Village
Improvement, for not the village only but all parts of a town
should be included in the plans and benefits of this movement.
17. An important work of rural improvement in many
towns would be the betterment of the surroundings of their
factories. Too frequently these grounds are disfigured with
rubbish and made unsightly by neglect. Keep a man in a
pig-sty and he would become swinish in his habits, but reverse
the conditions and you reverse the results. The influence of
flowers, shrubbery, or neat and cultivated grounds upon
operatives in refining their taste and promoting their happi-
ness and content is too often ignored. ' There is, however, a
goodly number of our manufacturers who show their interest
in their hands by making their factory buildings and tenement
houses inviting, comfortable and healthful, and adorning the
surrounding grounds. A description of the two model manu-
facturing villages of America and so far as I can judge, of the
world, will show the desirableness and results of better pro-
visions for the taste and comfort of operatives. I do not assume
that all factories can fully adopt the standard of these establish-
ments, which are in many particulars exceptional in their oppor-
tunities. There are serious embarrassments in large and crowded
manufacturing towns, especially where the factories are con-
trolled by non-resident owners, more anxious for dividends

46

than for the comfort and improvement of their workmen. The
liberal policy of the Willimantic Linen Company, to give one
of many similar examples, shows how these difficulties may be
surmounted by wise provisions for the improvement and edu-
cation of the hands.

One of these " models " is the silk factory of the Cheney
Brothers in South Manchester, Conn., by far the largest and
most successful factory of the kind in the world, making over
25,000 yards of ribbons and broad silks a day. This business
started here by the Cheney family in 1836, has steadily grown
in extent and prosperity to the present time. The factory village
covers about eight hundred acres of land and includes some two
hundred houses. A fine lawn laid out with winding concrete
walks and adorned with shrubs and flowers fronts the mills,
and usually each of the houses. No fence or visibly dividing
line separates the front yards from the roads. The Cheneys
have encouraged their hands to build and own their home-
steads, and to this end furnish the land, and loan money for
building at a low figure, with a " liquor reservation" in the
interest of temperance and with the understanding that all
houses shall be on a plan provided or approved by their archi-
tect and that all shall be neatly painted some neutral tint.
Not a house in glaring white here offends the eye. The beau-
tiful grounds of the Cheney mansions, of the operatives and of
the factories all present the appearance of an extended park,
and give a look of refinement, kindliness, and good neighbor-
hood to the whole village which is like a well-kept garden.
No private yard is left in an untidy state. No debris or rub-
bish is seen around or near any dwelling. There is evidently
a public sentiment in favor of neatness and order that per-
vades the entire community and allows no dirty nooks to be
found. Creeping vines cover " the office" and some of the
factory buildings and dwellings. No block houses are found
here. The cottages stand apart and vary in style, giving an
individuality to each place. A capacious aqueduct carries
water to every house. This village seems like a community
in the best sense of the term, with common interests, pursuits,
and sympathies. The providing of a large and commodious
lecture hall costing $50,000, together with interesting and in-

47

structive lectures and entertainments and a free library and
reading room, solely by the Cheney Brothers, shows their
intelligent and liberal methods of promoting the well-being
and content of their employe's. The hands highly appreciate
the liberality of their employers and feel a manifest interest in
their work and a pride in the place. Hence strikes and aliena-
tion between capital and labor are here unknown.

The other model manufacturing village is that of the Fair-
banks Company at St. Johnsbury, Yermont. There is the
largest manufactory of scales in the world, employing in the
factory and branch departments elsewhere, over one thousand
men, and manufacturing over 60,000 scales annually, the
sales now amounting to over $2,000,000 a year. It has
long been a marvel how such a concern could be made a
permanent success for full fifty years in the northeast corner
of Yermont, so far from tide-water, with expensive freightage,
the items of coal and iron alone being yearly about 10,000
tons, with many other heavy supplies from the sea-board and
the necessity of transporting thither, the manufactured
products. Throughout New England of late the tendency of
manufacturers has been from the interior to the seaside. They
have often abandoned old sites and water privileges far inland
and built near the great markets, where they must run by
steam only. But in St. Johnsbury, notwithstanding these dis<-
advantages, the business has steadily grown and become a suc-
cess, which, in view of the difficulties overcome, is unparal-
leled in this country.

What is the explanation of this marvelous prosperity ? On
revisiting St. Johnsbury recently, the first impressions made
seven years ago were confirmed. I inspected the works, talked
freely with the hands as well as the owners and with the citi-
zens of St. Johnsbury not connected with the factory. To
observe the home-life of the operatives, I entered their houses
and conversed with their families. These inquiries brought
out facts and inferences suggestive alike to all employers and
employed.

This village, where nature has been lavish of her gifts,
shows the added charms of landscape art. The whole town
is justly proud of their beautiful soldiers' monument, their

48

fine public building, and manifold rural adornments. This
company maintains the highest reputation for integrity.
Many names honored abroad are tarnished at home. Only the
strictest honesty and fair dealing can stand the test of daily
business intercourse with hundreds of hands for half a century.
" They do everything on the square," was, in substance, the
answer of many citizens and workmen to my inquiries on this
point. The company has fairly earned and gained the confi-
dence of their men arid of this entire community, and a good
name at home naturally follows them everywhere. The work-
men say that they are never permitted to do any sham-work,
even for the most distant market. To quote the pithy phrases
of the men, " no shoddy here," " no veneering," " no puttying."

There is a superior class of workmen in this establishment.
All are males. Their work is proof of skill. Their looks and
conversation indicate intelligence. They are mostly Ameri-
cans, and come from the surrounding towns. More than half
of them are married, and settled here as permanent residents,
interested in the schools and in all that relates to the prosper-
ity of the place. Many of them own their houses, with spa-
cious grounds for yard and garden, and often a barn for the
poultry and cow. These houses are pleasing in their exterior,
neatly furnished, and many of them supplied with pianos and
tapestry or Brussels carpets. How different from the nomadic
factory population, swarming from Canada and from other
lands to densely crowded tenement houses, who never bind
themselves to civilization by a home, much less by a house of
their own ! The tenement houses, also, are inviting and com-
fortable, and surrounded with unusually large grounds. The
town is managed on temperance principles, and drunkenness,
disorder and strife among the hands are almost unknown.
Most of them are church-goers, many of them church members.

I examined the pay-roll and found the wages very liberal.
The workmen seem well satisfied on that score. Wherever it
is possible, the work is paid for by the piece. The work itself
is largely done by machinery and that sui generis, invented
here and for the special and peculiar results here reached. The
men are encouraged to expedite their processes by new inven-
tions and share largely in the benefits of all such improve-

49

ments. I conversed with one of the hands who invented a
curious apparatus by which he marks a hundred register-bars
with greater accuracy and in but little more time than he could
formerly do one. He now finds working by the job especially
profitable. Paying by the piece has worked well here. The
men say it is fairer to pay for results than by hours. The
• worth of labor depends upon its products. This plan stimu-
lates industry, promotes skill, and fosters inventiveness. It
apportions rewards to the quantity and quality of work done.
But more than all, this plan is recognized by the men as just
and satisfactory. With the time left practically to their own
choice, there is no eight-hour movement here. No " Labor
League" or Union has ever existed — no strike ever been sug-
gested. This would be a poor place for the Internationals to
preach the gospel of idleness or agrarianism. Imagine one of
these delegates just arrived at St. Johnsbury and beginning his
arguments for a strike with Mr. - — , whose house I visited.
I fancy him replying somewhat as he did to my inquiry.
"Why is it you never have any strikes here?" "Well, we
have a good set of men to start with — temperate and moral.
Then we are well paid. Wages have often been advanced.
The owners take an interest in the men. They are liberal
and public spirited, and are doing a great deal for the place,
and we feel an interest in the success of the concern which
has been the making of St. Johnsbury."

There has evidently been mutual sympathy and interest
between employer and employed. The senior Governor Fair-
banks used to say to the men, "Ydu should always come
to me as to a father." He maintained relations of kindness
with them, visiting the sick, helping the needy, counseling
the erring, encouraging their thrift, enjoining habits of econ-
omy. He taught them that it was their interest and duty to
"lay up something every month," and that the best way to
rise in the social scale was to unite economy with increasing
wages. He himself both preached and practiced economy.
He was a conspicuous example at once of strict economy and
princely liberality. His benefactions were munificent, both
at home and abroad. The fact that so many of the work-
men are "fore-handed," besides owning their homesteads, is

50

due to his teaching and example. The worth and dignity
of work he illustrated in theory and practice. The notion
that labor was menial, or that the tools of trade or farm were
badges of servility, he despised. His sons worked in the
shop, and thoroughly learned the trade. The brothers of the
Governor were in full sympathy with him, and the same
spirit characterizes the sons and the surviving brother who
now manage the concern. There is still the fullest and hap-
piest conciliation between labor and capital. It is not strange
that the workmen " hold on." Their permanency is a striking
fact. Many have been here from twenty to over forty years.

Years ago the men were aided in forming and sustaining a
Lyceum, and liberal prizes were offered for the best essays read.
Recently, Horace Fairbanks has founded a library, and opened
a large reading-room free to all. The Athenaeum containing
the library, reading-room, and also a spacious lecture-hall, is an
elegant structure, ninety- five by forty feet, two stories high.
The books, now numbering nearly ten thousand volumes, are
choice and costly ; two hundred and thirty volumes have been
drawn in a single day. In the reading-room, besides a good
supply of American periodicals, daily, weekly and quarterly, I
noticed on the tables many European journals, including four
English quarterlies, six London weeklies, and ten monthlies.
The library and reading-room are open every week-day and
evening, except Wednesday evening, when all are invited to
attend the weekly "lecture," which is held at the same hour in
all the churches. Having visited nearly every town of Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut, and traveled widely in this country,
I have nowhere found in a village of this size an art gallery so
costly and so well supplied with painting and statuary, a
reading-room so inviting, and a library so choice and excellent
as this.

Thaddeus Fairbanks, one of the three founders of the scale
factory, has liberally endowed a large and nourishing academy,
which promises to become the " Williston Seminary" for north-
eastern Vermont.

These various provisions for the improvement, happiness,
and prosperity of this people, coupled with liberality and fair-
ness in daily business intercourse, explain the absence of dis-

51

content and the uniform sympathy, good feeling and harmony
which prevail.

How to harmonize labor and capital is now one of the great
questions of the age. Their alienation has recently caused idle-
ness, distress and crime on one side, and lock-outs, derange-
ment of business and enormous losses on the other. The many
millions lately lost by mistakes on this question furnish only a
new version of the old story of antagonisms between those who
should be partners. I have nowhere seen a better practical
solution of the Labor Question than in South Manchester and
St. Johnsbury.

18. As plans for Rural Improvement Associations are often
called for, the following, adopted in Clinton, Conn., is given.

This association, though organized less than two years since,
has already accomplished important results. A circular ad-
dressed to the citizens of that town by this association, says:

" At our last town meeting, a liberal sum was unanimously
appropriated for improving our road-sides. The cooperation
of every citizen is needed to carry on this good work. While
no sudden changes are expected, and while the full results
desired will require time, still, with the united efforts of our
people, Clinton can soon be made the most beautiful town on
the Shore Line, offering with the rare privileges opened in the
Morgan School, unequaled advantages and attractions to invite
wealthy and desirable residents who are seeking a country
home."

BY-LAWS AND .REGULATIONS OF THE CLINTON EURAL
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION.

1. This Association shall be called "The Rural Improve-
ment Association of Clinton."

2. The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public
spirit, quicken the social and intellectual life of the people,
promote good fellowship, and secure public health by better
hygienic conditions in our homes and surroundings, improve
our streets, roads, public grounds, side-walks, establish good
grass borders in the streets and public squares, provide drink-
ing troughs, break out paths through the snow, light the

52

streets, remove nuisances, and in general to build up and
beautify the whole town, and thus enhance the value of its
real estate and render Clinton a still more inviting place of
residence.

3. The officers of this Association shall consist of a Presi-
dent, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and an Execu-
tive Committee of fifteen, six of whom shall be ladies.

4. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to make
all contracts, employ all laborers, expend all moneys, and
superintend all improvements made by the Association. They
shall hold meetings monthly from April to October in each
year, and as much oftener as they may deem expedient.

5. Every person who shall plant three trees by the road-side,
under the direction of the Executive Committee, or pay three
dollars in one year or one dollar annually, and obligate him-
self or herself to pay the same annually for three years, shall
be a member of this Association.

6. The payment of ten dollars annually for three years, or
of twenty-five dollars in one sum, shall constitute one a life
member of this Association.

7. Five members of the Executive Committee present at
any meeting shall constitute a quorum.

8. No debt shall be contracted by the Executive Committee
beyond the amount of available means within their control,
and no member of the Association shall be liable for any debt
of the Association, beyond the amount of his or her subscrip-
tion.

9. The Executive Committee shall call an annual meeting,
giving due notice of the same, for the election of officers of
this Association, and at said meeting shall make a detailed
report of all moneys received and expended during the year,
the number of trees planted under their direction, and the
number planted by individuals, length of sidewalks made or
repaired, and the doings of the Committee in general.

10. This constitution may be amended at any annual meet-
ing by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting.

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