But it is to be noticed that the greatest profit per acre is almost invariably realized by those who have very small farms. The less they have, the more thoroughly is it cultivated; while the few who have sufficient faith in manure, and who thus convert their entire holding into a garden, realize twice or thrice as much per annum as they had paid for the land. I knew a striking illustration of the value of this faith in manure. It is in the person of a Jerseyman who began, twenty-five years ago, upon a single acre of rented land, with a capital of only $50, borrowed from a sister who had saved it from her earnings as a dairymaid. This man regarded the earth as of no practical use except to receive and hold manure; and his idea was, that if he crowded it full enough, every rain would extract from it, and convey directly to the roots of the plants, the liquid nutriment which gives to all vegetation such amazing vigor. Thus, the solids, if in sufficient supply, would be sure to furnish the liquids, on which he knew he could rely. Though full of original and practical ideas, this was his absorbing one; and he pursued it with an energy of purpose and a liberality of expenditure that surprised the population of an entire township.
In spite of the disadvantages attendant on a neglected education, the force of this man’s strong natural sense carried him forward with astonishing rapidity. True to his faith in manure, he bought and manufactured to an extent far exceeding all his neighbors. He soon obtained possession of a small farm, with ample time allowed for payment; for his industry and skill established a character, and character served for capital. In a few years he monopolized the contents of all the pig-pens in the city near which he resided, all that was produced by the slaughter-houses, all the lime from the gas-works, all the spent bark from the tanneries, and every tub of night-soil which came from the water-closets of a large population. He created a demand for manure so general, that the streets were traversed by men and boys with carts and handbarrows, who daily picked up the droppings from the numerous livestock which passed over the roads, and piled them snugly in fence-corners, composting them with leaves and rubbish, knowing that the great manure king would take them all. The quantity thus collected by these industrious scavengers was very large. In addition to all this, he purchased cargoes of marl, charcoal cinders from the pines, guano, and sloop-loads of manures from the city. The world within his reach seemed unable to supply his vast demand.
His cash outlay for these fertilizers was of course enormous, and has amounted to thousands of dollars per annum. It has been constantly increasing, and grows even as I write. But his faith in manure was accompanied by works. What he thus collected at so great a cost, was applied with singular shrewdness to the production of fruits and vegetables for the great city markets. His fields rewarded him in proportion as he enriched them. His neighbors, who, for miles around, had been astonished and incredulous at his unprecedented outlay for manure, were in turn astonished at the extraordinary quantities of fruit and truck which he dispatched to market. As he went early and largely into the growing of rhubarb, when all others were too timid even to touch it, so for years he was the only man who sent tons of it to market during a long period in which it paid extravagant profits. By skilfully regulating his crops, he secured an uninterrupted succession during the entire season; so that from the earliest to the latest period of the year he was constantly receiving large cash returns. His wagons have sometimes loaded an entire steamboat, sometimes an entire train upon the railroad. By growing asparagus, he has realized great profits. For years he commanded the Baltimore markets with his strawberries, while various other large towns depended on him for their supplies. I have been upon his thirty acres of this fruit during the height of the season, when fifty pickers were at work on ground which wore a tinge of luscious scarlet under the astonishing profusion of the crop; while thousands of quarts, under adjacent sheds, were in process of being boxed for market. Of this fruit he has sent ninety bushels to market in a single day, distributed $300 in a week among his pickers, while in the boxes to contain them his investment is $1,500. On strawberries alone this man could have grown rich.
But they are scarcely a tithe of what he has produced. Raspberries, blackberries, and all the smaller fruits have been cultivated quite as extensively. The same courageous intelligence which led him to out-strip all competitors in the application of manure, kept him awake to every improvement in fruit or vegetable as it came before the public. He not only procured the best of every kind, but bought them early, no matter how extravagant the price. Thus keeping in advance of all others, so his profits have exceeded theirs. More than once he has been cheated by the purchase of novelties of this kind, besides losing time and money in cultivating them long enough to prove the cheat; but these losses have been but as dust in the great balance of his profit.
As may be supposed, such a man could not fail to become rich. From his humble beginning of a single acre he has gone on adding farm to farm, house to house, and lot to lot, and is ever on hand to purchase more. His passion is to own land. But even so thorough a farmer as he may in the end acquire too much to be profitable.
The example thus set has had a marked influence on the population of entire townships. Men who at first, and who even for years, were incredulous of the propriety of using such vast quantities of manure, at length became converts to the example. High farming thus came extensively into vogue. Meantime the facilities for getting to market were being constantly multiplied. New fertilizers were introduced and kept for sale in all the country towns, the facility for obtaining them thus inducing a general consumption. As crops increased, so the great cities grew in size, the number of mouths to be fed enlarging with the supply of food. Under the pressure of all these several inducements, fruit and truck have been produced in quantities that cannot be estimated.
The first great impulse to its enlarged production in the neighborhood where the enterprising consumer of manure resided, to whom reference has been made, was the result of his example. His great success removed all doubt and disarmed all opposition. But even his was not achieved without unremitting industry and intelligent application of the mind. Neither his hands nor the manure did every thing. But manure lay at the foundation of the edifice: without it he would have toiled in vain to build up an ample fortune from the humblest of beginnings. As he succeeded, so let others take counsel, and have faith in manure.
CHAPTER XXII.
PROFITS OF FRUIT-GROWING—THE TRADE IN BERRIES.
IT cannot be supposed that agriculture is always a successful pursuit. On the contrary, we know it many times to be the reverse. But when one looks carefully into that branch of it which embraces fruits, especially the smaller kinds, the evidences in its favor as a money-making business multiply as we proceed. The reader must have some knowledge of the prodigious profits realized a few years since by the peach-growers in Delaware, where 800 acres were cultivated in that fruit by a single individual. At one time he was compelled to charter several steamboats during the entire season, to convey his thousands of baskets to market. From only 70 acres the owner has realized a net profit of $12,000, in one season. The instance of my relative in Ohio, mentioned in an earlier chapter, affords another illustration of what a very small orchard can be made to yield. I have known single peach-trees in gardens, in seasons when the general crop was short, producing as much as $20 each. Those who buy single peaches at the street corners in our cities, one or two for a dime, can readily understand these figures. I could point out a garden belonging to a widow, containing twelve plum-trees, from which she regularly receives $60 every year, and sometimes even more. Grapes are never so abundant in market as to reduce the price below the point of profit.
The prices paid for pears are such as to seem absurdly high. But even when rebellion had most depressed the market, I knew a single tree to net $23 to the owner. Another grower, from three trees, annually receives $60. A citizen of New York is the owner of three pear-trees which have yielded eleven barrels, and produced $137. There is another tree in that State, seventy years old, from which, in that period, $3,750 worth of pears have been sold—enough to pay for a farm. A young orchard of four hundred trees, some eight years after planting, at two years’ crops yielded the owner $1,450. An acre of the best pear-trees, well managed, will produce more profit than a five-hundred-acre farm, without a twentieth of the care or capital.