Addresses: by John A. Martin. Delivered in Kansas.

by John Alexander Martin

At the beginning, therefore, I desire to say that I am neither a practical nor a theoretical farmer. It occasionally happens, that a man living in town or city has a real love for farm life. Such a man, if he cannot gratify his bent, delights to study the literature of farming, and thus accumulates a great harvest of theory, which, if practically applied, would probably result in the production of enormous cabbages and potatoes, and large crops of cereals, all costing their producer three or four times their market value. A Kansas friend of mine who has this sort of a penchant for farming, and wealth which enables him to gratify it, owns a large farm in one of the eastern counties of the State. Some years ago a number of his friends from the Eastern States came to visit him, and he took them out to see his farm. After they had admired its finely-cultivated fields, its blooded stock, and other attractions, the proud owner escorted the party to the farm-house, where an elaborate luncheon had been prepared for his guests. The bill of fare included delicious milk and—this was before the era of prohibition—sparkling champagne. When the company had assembled, the host said: “Now, gentlemen, here is milk and here is champagne; help yourselves to either; it makes no difference to me—they both cost the same!”

I cannot, however, claim to have even such knowledge of farming as these city farmers may be possessed of. My whole life, except some years of my boyhood, has been passed in towns or cities, where my work and my duties have happened to be. I have never even attempted to conduct a farm. I have, of course, indulged in that universal day-dream of the dwellers in cities or towns—the aspiration for a country home. The merchant in his counting room, the professional man at his desk, the artisan in his workshop, all indulge in this dream of a quiet, peaceful home in the country; a home embowered in trees, where the birds sing, and the breath of the morning is sweet with the perfume of flowers; where the horizon is broad, and the view over meadows, woods and fields is as restful as it is beautiful; and where the roar and clangor and fury of city life are shut out. There is something in the nature of the whole human race—in the blood from our first parents, perhaps, or that of our not far distant progenitors who wandered over the fresh earth, living in tents and pasturing their flocks—that whispers of the green fields and the quiet woods, and fills all our hearts with longing for their beauty and their repose.

Very few, however, realize this dream: I have never been able to. It would be absurd for me, therefore, to talk to practical farmers about the business of their lives, or to assume to instruct them concerning the best methods of farming. You need have no fear that I will attempt to do this.

But there are some things connected with farm life about which I may be able to present suggestions of interest, if not of value. First, then, it seems to me that too many Kansas farmers fail to appreciate the cash value of pleasant surroundings at home, the real worth of farm adornments, the dollars and cents that multiply in flowers and shrubbery on well-kept lawns, and especially the wealth that is accumulating in trees that are growing while they are sleeping.

There is a material and pecuniary side to this question of home adornments, as well as an æsthetic side. The value of a farm—its cash value, I mean—cannot be measured entirely by the fertility of its soil, nor by the crops it produces, nor by the springs and streams that rise or flow upon it. Its market value is affected, far more than many farmers imagine, by the surroundings of its owner’s home. If these resemble the environments of a wretched hovel on the outskirts of a town; if the front door-yard is a pig-sty, and the back door-yard a cattle-pen; if the farm-house stands, bare and desolate, like a brown rock in a desert, beaten upon by sun and storms, by rain and wind, do you think the value of the farm is not impaired? To say nothing of the personal discomfort of such surroundings, do they not involve, also, a cash depreciation of the land?

I am not talking of the homes of farmers who, lately arrived, and possessed of limited means, have located on quarter-sections of raw prairie, and are devoting all of their energies to the work of producing crops. The patient heroism, the true nobility that has been illustrated in the daily lives of thousands of Kansas farmers and Kansas farmers’ wives—men and women who, coming here with hardly a dollar, live in rude dug-outs or cabins, in cruel isolation and bitter poverty, toiling, saving, and enduring patiently the most trying privations, in order that they may at last own a farm and a home—this sort of Kansas heroism, so common and yet so splendid, may justly challenge the applause and admiration of the world. I am speaking of and criticising, not this class of farmers, but the farmer who, having secured a good farm and a fair competency, goes on living his old life of monotonous drudgery, and compels the faithful wife, who has been the companion of his toils and his struggles, to live it with him.

Of what benefit is money, if it does not purchase some of the comforts of life? Of what value are expanding acres and luxuriant crops, if they do not bring in their train the delights of a pleasant and cheerful home?

I know farmers in this State—men abundantly able to build comfortable homes, and to surround them with all that makes life opulent and happy—who seem content to exist amid the meanest and most squalid surroundings. The charm and glory of a beautiful land is all about them, but it touches no responsive chord in their hearts. Their houses are not homes—they are simply places in which to eat and sleep. Summer suns and winter winds blaze and beat upon them. No overhanging trees throw around them the refreshing coolness of their shade. No verdure of grass or perfume of flowers encircles them. No birds make the air about them vocal with music. There they stand, lonely and desolate, avoided by every sweet and beautiful thing in nature; and even the fresh breath of the morning and the gentle breeze of twilight come to them tainted and impure. Every burden and trial of human life must be multiplied and intensified by such dreary surroundings. Yet I know, and all of you probably know, farmers’ homes like unto this I have described.

There is, as I have said, no excuse for the farmer who, after a residence of four or five years in Kansas, continues to live amid such surroundings. He may not be able to build a fine house, but he can at least plant a few trees around his home, and let the rich grass and the lovely flowers of our prairies grow and blossom about his door-yard. All these beautiful things can be had, by every son and daughter of Kansas, without wealth to buy them; and with them will come the music of singing birds, and shelter against sun and wind, and comfort, rest, and a larger and broader view of the beauty of life and the bounty of God.

I have noticed, too, that the farmers who continue to live amid such squalid surroundings at home, are those most likely to indulge in prodigal extravagance, or, more properly, reckless waste, in other directions. They buy expensive reapers, and leave them in the fields where they were last used, to be consumed by rust and rot. Their wagons are never housed, and their plows and harrows are consigned to the first convenient fence-corner. Their horses and cattle shiver in the wintry winds, or find shelter only by gnawing holes in straw-stacks. They have no granaries for their wheat, no cribs for their corn, and so are compelled to sell their products at once, generally at the lowest prices of the year. And having thus invited poverty by waste or carelessness, they call it bad luck, or attribute their misfortunes to the contraction of the currency, or to railroad monopolies, or to any other cause except the real cause—their own lack of order, system, and intelligently-directed energy.