But in less than a century sugar-trees, sugar-troughs, and pioneer sugar making have been classed with things of the past, scarcely known by the many, and remembered but by a few; and shows how soon time makes abandoned words and many simple expressions of facts obsolete and unknown. When it is said, “In infancy he was rocked in a sugar-trough,” the language to many is as figurative, hypothetical or meaningless as the “lullaby upon the tree tops.” The younger generations never saw the pioneer cradle, and Noah Webster did not get far enough West to incorporate the word in his “Revised Dictionary.”
The ordinary use of sugar-troughs was to catch and hold the sweet water as it dripped from the “spile” placed in the sugar-tree. But under certain circumstances good specimens were devoted to other purposes, and not a few eminent lawyers, doctors, statesmen and divines have proudly referred to their cradling days as those having been well spent in the pioneer environment of a “sugar-trough.”
The sugar made from trees was gradually superseded by cane and beet productions; and the supply has always remained equal to the demand at moderate prices; and not until 1887 did the country discover the necessity of a “Sugar Trust” to control and regulate the trade of the United States. This combine started with a capital of seven million dollars, capitalized at fifty millions, and again was watered up to seventy-five millions. This trust controlled four-fifths to ninety-eight per cent of all the refined sugar in the United States.
The president of this trust has been receiving an annual salary of one hundred thousand dollars and the secretary seventy-five thousand. The stockholders have absorbed as dividends nearly four hundred million dollars in the eleven years of its existence, while thousands of its employes obtain but six dollars a week, working twelve hours each day in rooms at a temperature not much below two hundred degrees. The scales of justice are not often evenly balanced in trust monopolies that yield a net income of five hundred per cent profit on the capital invested.
The pioneer, however, had no use for “combines” to keep him poor, for like many facts not admitted or recognized at the time, good subsistence was so easily obtained from nature that it frequently contributed much toward creating an indifference for labor, which remained through life and kept the man of destiny no better off than when he arrived at his new home. It was no easy task to clear the land and prepare the soil for agricultural purposes. As a rule the timber was large and thickly set upon the ground; usually the best soil was covered with the greatest trees, and the labor required for their removal was not inviting to those who could subsist well without it. The white oak, burr oak, black oak, black walnut, sycamore, poplar, and other varieties, had for centuries been adding size and strength to their immense proportions. These giants, and the smaller timber and undergrowth, required great energy, perseverance and protracted labor to remove and clear the ground ready for a crop. The usual plan for their removal was by “girdling,” or cutting a circle around the trunk of each sufficiently deep to kill the tree, and then to burn by piece-meals as the branches and trunks came down by reason of time and decay. Consequently the patch of sunshine around these primitive homes, as a rule, did not enlarge very rapidly, and the pioneer too often became a man of procrastination and promise; and for all the time he had (the present) preferred the dog and gun to the maul and wedge as a means of subsistence. Some, however, opened up small fields and farms by disposing of the timber in this slow way. In the meantime, while the process of decay was going on, grain and vegetables were grown in the openings among the dead timber. The crops were generally divided pretty equally between the wild animals and the landlord. This loss, however, was of no great importance as there was no money, market, or mill; nor domestic animals to take a surplus. At a later day, and after the introduction of “movable mills,”[3] there still existed no market for the products of the soil, and to grow enough for food seemed all that could be required of the most ambitious pioneer; and if at any time the returns exceeded the estimates and insured a surplus, such overabundance seldom went to waste, as there were always enough who yearly came short in this respect, and were ready to share with the more prosperous neighbor.
The time and labor expended upon clearing the ground and raising grain met with little or no reward. The products could not be sold nor exchanged for necessaries of life. Consequently the forests remained quite undisturbed for many years and agriculture neglected, excepting for the necessary consumption of the family. The early settler, however, was not all the time free from discouragements. His domestic animals frequently became lost, or destroyed by ravenous beasts; and diseases of the country occasionally were protracted; and to the wife and children, he sometimes felt, it was not so much a paradise. But he came to stay, and this, for better or for worse, was his home, and submitted philosophically to circumstances and events he could not control.
The wife and mother endured with patience and heroism all privations and afflictions equally with the husband and father, and performed the arduous household duties; and, like the model woman of old, “sought wool and flax and worked willingly with her hands,” and the whirring spinning-wheel and thudding loom were heard in most every household. The welfare of the family depended upon the success of home industries, and consequently the wife had much less leisure than the husband. She superintended the manufacture of all the fabrics for the house and for the clothing of the family, and cut and made up the same without protection, tariff, rebate, or combine. And it is singular so little has been recorded of the good women who unlocked the resources of the new territory and gave their aid in founding a civilization that has surpassed all precedents in the history of nations.
Natives of every country and of every grade of intelligence in the new environment became alike distinguished for liberality and hospitality—ever desirous to forget the past, willing to admit the future, and ready to enjoy the present, the life of the pioneer was seldom darkened or overburdened with toil or care, and had times of good cheer, and was not without his social amusements. The violin and Monongahela whisky found way to the settlements and were accepted by many, young and old; and the dance after a quilting, shooting-match, fox-chase, bear-hunt, log-rolling, or house-raising gave all the pleasure and excitement desired.
As the population became more numerous, leisure and the desire for amusements increased; and among the many ways devised to entertain and interest, no one, perhaps, ever received more attention, higher cultivation, and obtained more general favor than the chase. Most descendants of Virginia, however destitute in other respect, had their packs of “hounds,” and the good people and the better, the poor and the poorer, some on horse and some on foot, mingled alike in the exciting sport.
The pedigrees, qualities, and performances of “lead dogs” of different owners were known over the country, and their comparative merits were frequently subjects that called forth the warmest discussions, the disputants generally ending the controversy with knock-down arguments on both sides. The owners of the dogs always manifested great pride and satisfaction in public praises and good will toward their animals, and no offense received a greater condemnation than the theft or injury of one of these “noblemen’s pets.”