III. The farmer's calling seems to me that most conducive to thorough manliness of character. Nobody expects him to cringe, or smirk, or curry favor, is order to sell his produce. No merchant refuses to buy it because his politics are detested or his religious opinions heterodox. He may be a Mormon, a Rebel, a Millerite, or a Communist, yet his Grain or his Pork will sell for exactly what it is worth—not a fraction less or more than the price commanded by the kindred product of like quality and intrinsic value of his neighbor, whose opinions on all points are faultlessly orthodox and popular. On the other hand, the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, especially if young and still struggling dubiously for a position, are continually tempted to sacrifice or suppress their profoundest convictions in deference to the vehement and often irrational prepossessions of the community, whose favor is to them the breath of life. "She will find that that won't go down here," was the comment of an old woman on a Mississippi steamboat, when told that the plain, deaf stranger, who seemed the focus of general interest, was Miss Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian; and in so saying she gave expression to a feeling which pervades and governs many if not most communities. I doubt whether the social intolerance of adverse opinions is more vehement anywhere else than throughout the larger portion of our own country. I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were adverse to public opinion: the writers evidently assuming, as a matter of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to know what other people thought to insure my instant and abject conformity to their prejudices. Very often, in other days, I was favored with letters from indignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question, took this method of informing me that they should no longer take my journal—a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their subscriptions, and their Tribune would stop coming, whenever they should have received what we owed them; and it would in no case stop till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher—that he necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because they were not shared by others—in short, that his calling was other and higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to furnish whatever was called for, so long as the pay was forthcoming—these ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. That such persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true; and yet, a man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation is held in such low esteem by others. The true farmer is proudly aware that it is quite otherwise with his pursuit—that no one expects him to swallow any creed, support any party, or defer to any prejudice, as a condition precedent to the sale of his products. Hence, I feel that it is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to work for a living, and aspire to success and consideration, without sacrificing self-respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be essentially and thoroughly a gentleman.
XXXII.
A LESSON OF TO-DAY.
The current season is quite commonly characterized as the coldest, the hottest, the wettest, or the dryest, that was ever known. Men undoubtingly assert that they never knew a Summer so hot, or a Winter so cold, when in fact several such have occurred within the cycle of their experience. Hardly anything else is so easily or so speedily forgotten as extremes of temperature or inclemencies of weather, after they have passed away. I presume there have been six to ten Summers, since the beginning of this century, as hot and as dry as that of 1870; yet the fact remains that, throughout the Eastern section of our country, to say nothing of the rest, the heat and drouth of the current Summer have been quite remarkable. For two months past, counting from the 10th of June, nearly every day has been a hot one, with blazing sunshine throughout, rarely interrupted and slightly modified by infrequent and inadequate showers; and, as a general result of this tropical fervor, the earth is parched and baked from ten to forty inches from the surface; streams and ponds are dried up or shrunk to their lowest dimensions; forests are often ravaged and desolated by fires; our pastures are dry and brown; while crops of Hay, Oats, Potatoes, Buckwheat, etc., either have proved, or certainly must prove, a disappointment to the hopes of the growers. I estimate the average product for 1870 of the farms of New-England, eastern New-York and New-Jersey, as not more than two-thirds of a full harvest; while the earth remains at this moment so baked and incrusted that several days' rain is needed to fit it for Fall plowing and the sowing of Winter grain.
Such seasons must not be regarded as extraordinary. The Summer of 1854 was nearly or quite as dry as this; and I presume one or two such have intervened since that time. The heat of 1870 is remarkable for its persistence rather than its intensity. Every Summer has its heated term; that of 1870 has been longer in this region than any before it that I can remember, though doubtless the recollection of others might supply its perfect counterpart. Nearly every Summer has its drouth; the present is peculiar rather for its early commencement than its extreme duration. As our country is more and more denuded of its primitive forests, drouths longer and severer even than this may naturally be expected. What our farmers have to do is, to prepare for and provide against them.
Such seasons are disastrous to those only who farm as if none such were to be expected. Those who plow deeply, fertilize bountifully, and cultivate thoroughly, need not fear them, as fields of Hay and Oats already harvested, and of Corn and Potatoes now hastening to maturity in almost every township of the suffering region, abundantly attest. I doubt that more luxuriant crops of Corn, Tobacco, or Onions, were ever grown on the bottom-lands of the Connecticut Valley than may be seen there to-day, with failures all about them, and under drouth so fierce that Blackberries and Whortleberries are withered when half grown; even the bushes in some cases perishing for lack of moisture.
My last trip took me along the banks of the upper Hudson, through the rugged county of Warren, N. Y. The narrow, irregular intervale of this mountain stream appear to have been cultivated for the last fifty or sixty years by a hardy race, who look mainly to the timber of the wild region north of them for a subsistence. In such a district, whatever ministers to the sustenance of man or beast bears a high price; and Corn, Rye, Oats, Buckwheat, Apples and Grass, are grown wherever the soil is not too rugged or too sterile for culture. I presume half a crop of Hay has been secured throughout this valley, with perhaps a full crop of Rye where Rye was sown; but of Oats the yield will be considerably less than that, while of Corn and Buckwheat it will range from ten bushels per acre down to nothing. When I, last Summer, passed through spacious field after field of Corn in Virginia that would not mature a single ear, I spoke of it as something unknown at the North; but there are fields planted to Corn, in the upper valley of the Hudson, that will not produce a single sound ear, nor one bushel even of the shortest and poorest "nubbins;" and alongside of these are acres of Buckwheat, blossoming at an average hight of four inches, and not likely to get two inches higher.
Now, if this land were so poor or so rocky that good crops could not be extracted from it, far be it from me to disparage the agriculture whereof the results are so meagre; but I am speaking of a river intervale of considerable natural fertility, from which deep and thorough cultivation would insure ample harvests, subject only to the contingency of early frosts in Autumn. Were these lands fertilized and cultivated as they might be, and as mine are, they would yield 30 bushels of Rye or 60 of Indian Corn per acre, and would richly repay the husbandman's outlay and efforts. Now, I venture to say that all the grain I saw growing in the valley of the Hudson through Warren County will not return the farmer 75 cents for each day's labor expended thereon, allowing nothing for the use of the land.