FENCES AND FENCING.
Though I have already indicated, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such importance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is peculiarly an American abuse, which urgently cries for reform.
Solon Robinson says the fence-tax is the heaviest of our farmer's taxes. I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible.
Highways we must have, and people must traverse them; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops growing on either side. In France, and other parts of Europe, you see grass and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten tracks, with nothing like a fence between them. Yet those crops are nowise injured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under subjection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the wayside.
In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small scale, and for short distances, has nearly been superceded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every way unwholesome. Every animal should be turned out to grass, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We must have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food.
Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork, will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars: each animal having been killed while in perfect health, unfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their sustenance was drawn and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meat, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less than that of bringing through the animals on their legs; while the danger of putrefaction might be utterly precluded.
But to return to Fencing:
Our growing plants must be preserved from animal ravage; but it is most unjust to impose the cost of this protection on the growers. Whoever chooses to rear or buy animals must take care that they do not infest and despoil his neighbors. Whoever sees fit to turn animals into the street, should send some one with them who will be sure to keep them out of mischief, which browsing young trees in a forest clearly is.
If the inhabitants of a settlement or village surrounded by open prairie, see fit to pasture their cattle thereon, they should send them out each morning in the charge of a well-mounted herdsmen, whose duty should be summed up in keeping them from evildoing by day and bringing them safely back to their yard or yards at nightfall.
Fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer class, who are least able to afford the outlay. The "clearing" of the pioneer's first year in the wilderness, being enlarged by ax and fire, needs a new and far longer environment next year; and so through subsequent years until clearing is at an end. Many a pioneer is thus impelled to devote a large share of his time to Fencing; and yet his crops often come to grief through the depredations of his own or his neighbor's breachy cattle.
Fences produce nothing but unwelcome bushes, briers and weeds. So far as they may be necessary, they are a deplorable necessity. When constructed where they are not really needed, they evince costly folly. I think I could point out farms which would not sell to-day for the cost of rebuilding their present fences.
We cannot make open drains or ditches serve for fences in this country, as they sometimes do in milder and more equable climates, because our severe frosts would heave and crumble their banks if nearly perpendicular, sloping them at length in places so that animals might cross them at leisure. Nor have we, so far north as this city, had much success with hedges, for a like reason. There is scarcely a hedge-plant at once efficient in stopping animals and so hardy as to defy the severity, or rather the caprice, of our Winters. I scarcely know a hedge which is not either inefficient or too costly for the average farmer; and then a hedge is a fixture; whereas we often need to move or demolish our fences.
Wire Fences are least obnoxious to this objection; they are very easily removed; but a careless teamster, a stupid animal, or a clumsy friend, easily makes a breach in one, which is not so easily repaired. Of the few Wire Fences within my knowledge, hardly one has remained entire and efficient after standing two or three years.
Stone Walls, well built, on raised foundations of dry earth, are enduring and quite effective, but very costly. My best have cost me at least $5 per rod, though the raw material was abundant and accessible. I doubt that any good wall is built, with labor at present prices, for less than $5 per rod. Perhaps I should account this costliness a merit, since it must impel farmers to study how to make few fences serve their turn.
Rail Fences will be constructed only where timber is very abundant, of little value, and easily split. Whenever the burning of timber to be rid of it has ceased, there the making of rail fences must be near its end.
Where fences must still be maintained, I apprehend that posts and boards are the cheapest material. Though Pine lumber grows dear, Hemlock still abounds; and the rapid destruction of trees for their bark to be used in tanning must give us cheap hemlock boards throughout many ensuing years. Spruce, Tamarack, and other evergreens from our Northern swamps, will come into play after Hemlock shall have been exhausted.
As for posts, Red Cedar is a general favorite; and this tree seems to be rapidly multiplying hereabout. I judge that farmers who have it not, might wisely order it from a nursery and give it an experimental trial. It is hardy; it is clean; it makes but little shade; and it seems to fear no insect whatever. It flourishes on rocky, thin soils; and a grove of it is pleasant to the sight—at least, to mine.
Locust is more widely known and esteemed; but the borer has proved destructive to it on very many farms, though not on mine. I like it well, and mean to multiply it extensively by drilling the seed in rich garden soil and transplanting to rocky woodland when two years old. Sowing the seed among rocks and bushes I have tried rather extensively, with poor success. If it germinates at all, the young tree is so tiny and feeble that bushes, weeds, and grass, overtop and smother it.
That a post set top-end down will last many years longer than if set as it grew, I do firmly believe, though I cannot attest it from personal observation. I understand the reason to be this: Trees absorb or suck up moisture from the earth; and the particles which compose them are so combined and adjusted as to facilitate this operation. Plant a post deeply and firmly in the ground, butt-end downward, and it will continue to absorb moisture from the earth as it did when alive; and the post, thus moistened to-day and dried by wind and sun to-morrow, is thereby subjected to more rapid disintegration and decay than when reversed.
My general conclusion is, that the good farmer will have fewer and better fences than his thriftless neighbor, and that he will study and plan to make fewer and fewer rods of fence serve his needs, taking care that all he retains shall be perfect and conclusive. Breachy cattle are a sad affliction alike to their owner and his neighbor; and shaky, rotting, tumble-down fences, are justly responsible for their perverse education. Let us each resolve to take good care that his own cattle shall in no case afflict his neighbors, and we shall all need fewer fences henceforth and evermore.