Hope Farm Notes

by Herbert W. Collingwood

And the distribution of the rewards received in exchange for that combination was still more typical. Now and then the woman would think the woodshed was not filling very fast, so that some form of bribery to labor was necessary. She would then come out with half a pie, or a few cookies, to stimulate the work. Strange to say, the distribution of this prize was always given to the girl. She was doing that absolutely useless work of piling the wood, and yet the pie and the cookies were handed to her for distribution. For a great many centuries, it must be said that the farmer never had much of a chance with the town man when it came to receiving favors from the ladies, and in the distribution of that pie John and Mary usually ate about seven-eighths of it, and handed the balance to Bert, for even then those city children had formed the idea that a silent, unresisting farm boy was made to be the beast of burden, fit for the frosty side of the barn.

And just as happens in other and larger forms of business, there were, in that toy performance of a great drama, forms of legislative bribery for middlemen and farmers. Those children were told that if they would hurry and get the woodshed filled up, they would receive pleasure and a present. John and Mary, as middlemen, might go to the circus, while the boy on the saw would receive a fine present. This would be a book which told how a splendid little boy sawed 15 cords of wood in two weeks, and then asked his mother if he couldn’t please go down the road and saw five cords more for a poor widow woman during his play time. Ever since the world began, that seems to have been the idea of agricultural legislation. The real direct pleasure and profit have gone to John and Mary, while to Bert has gone the promise of an education which will teach him how to work a little harder. Looking back over the world’s history, the most astonishing thing to me is that society has failed to see that the best investment of public money and power is that made closest up to the ground, the great mother of us all. Other interests have received it, largely because they have been able to organize and make a stronger appeal to the imagination.

Of course in every drama of human life there has to be a crisis where the actors come to blows, and it happened so in this case. There came one day particularly cold, and with a special run of hard and knotty wood to be sawed. That gave John and Mary more time for play, and put an extra job on Bert. I cannot tell just how the battle started; it may have been caused by Mary, for a thousand times in the history of the world the relations between two boys and a girl have upset all calculations and changed the course of history. Or it may be that the spirit of injustice boiled up in the heart of that boy on the saw, and swept away his peaceful disposition. At any rate, when John found fault because he did not work faster, Bert dropped his saw and tackled the tormentor. If I am to tell the truth, I am forced to admit that there was no science at all about the battle which that boy put up for the rights of farm labor. He should, I suppose, have imitated some of the old heroes described by Homer and Virgil, but as the rage of battle came over him, the most effective fighter he could think of was the old ram, and I regret to say that he lowered his head, and, without regard for science, butted John in the stomach and knocked him down. Then he sat on his enemy, took hold of his hair with both hands, and proceeded to pound his head on the frosty ground, while Mary danced about, not caring to interfere, but evidently waiting to bestow her favors upon the victor. And just as John was getting ready to call “enough” the kitchen door opened and out came the woman of the house with the old minister.

She certainly looked like a very stern picture of justice as she peered over her spectacles at the boys on the ground, and the three children were arraigned before her. “What shall I do with these children? I shall never get this job done. I have spent nearly five pies on these children already, and see how little they have piled, and here they are fighting over it. I think the best thing I can do is to whip that lazy boy at the saw.”

I wish you could have seen the face of the old minister as he rolled up his wrinkles and prepared to answer. It was worth a good deal to see how he looked out of the corner of his eye at the boy on the saw.

“My good friend,” said he, “this is not a case for prayer or for punishment, or for investigation, or for education. It is a case for an adjustment of labor and pie. That boy on the saw has been doing practically all of the work, and getting almost nothing of the reward. He is discouraged, and I don’t blame him. You cannot crowd more work out of him with a stick. Move him out into the sun, give him the pie, and let him eat his share and distribute the rest. Make the other boy split and carry and pile all that wood, and put that girl at washing windows. The closer you put the pie up to the sawbuck, the more wood you will have cut.”

Now tell me, you scientists and you wise men, if that does not tell the whole story. It is the pie of life, or the fair distribution of that pie, which leads men and women to the sunny side of the barn. What we need most of all in this country is some power like that of the old minister, who can drive that thought home to human society, and it will not be driven home until our leaders and our teachers have in their hearts more of the poetry and the imagination which lead men and women to attempt the impossible and work it out. You will not agree with me when I say that in a majority of the farm homes today there is greater need of the gentle, humanizing influence of poetry and vision than of the harder and sterner influence of science and sharp business practice. As the years go on you will come to see that I am right.

I know that is one of the hardest things on earth for some of us to understand, for modern education has led us away from the thought. In our grasp for knowledge we have tried to substitute science entirely for sentiment, forgetting that the really essential things of life cannot stand close analysis, because they are held together by faith. In reaching out after power we have tried too hard to imitate the shrewd scheming of the politician and the big interests. We have failed thus far because we have neglected too many of our natural weapons. Over 200 years ago Andrew Fletcher wrote:

“I knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.”

Andrew Fletcher’s wise man knew what he was talking about. Very likely some of you older people can remember the famous Hutchinson family in the days before the Civil War. I have seen the New Hampshire farmhouse where they were raised. It was just a group of plain farmers who traveled about the country singing simple little songs about freedom. That plain farm family did more to make the American people see the sin of slavery than all the statesmen New England could muster or all the laws she could make. There was little science and less art about their singing, but it was in the language of the common people and they understood it.