June 17.—It is all right to go and hook your chin over the top wire of the fence and do mental arithmetic about how much corn a five-acre field should yield, and how many chickens the corn will feed, and what the cornstalks will be worth for cattle fodder, and what crop should be put in after the corn, but if you are going to have a crop of any kind you must drain the land. After the heaviest of that series of showers we had last week I went out to look at the field where the corn had been trying for the past two weeks to get through the ground while the crows and blackbirds have been doing all they can to help it, when I noticed that one of the slip furrows had not been cleaned out. The rain had started the water flowing from the woods, and if there was to be any corn on the piece of flat land through which the furrow passes it must be cleaned out so that the water would drain off and not drown the crop. Like Davy Crockett, "I seen my duty and I done it." The long-handled shovel was hunted up, and presently I was returning to the field quoting that classic which every schoolboy once knew:—
"Honest John Tompkins, the hedger and ditcher,
Who, though he was poor, never wished to be richer."
Memory also gave back the fine moral tale about John Adams and his Latin grammar. The President in embryo found ditching so hard that to get away from it he started off with a rush that finally landed him in the White House. Because of this, ditching has long been regarded as one of the finest things in the world to urge young men to higher things. They have been known to work so hard to get away from ditching that they have become multi-millionaires and ministers and school teachers and such like.
The land through which the slip furrow passes is dead level, and, having been loosened by ploughing and harrowing, about an acre of it was as soft as mortar and as sticky as a bad reputation. Some one had told me once that when ditching one should begin at the top of the drain and work down with the water. That enabled me to start from the strip of sod at the edge of the woods. The first little dam of sod and earth in the furrow was as far out as I could reach with the long-handled shovel while standing dry shod. After making a couple of foolish pokes I straightened up to consider the situation. It was much the same kind of position you find yourself in when your golf ball falls in the water hazard that an unfeeling greens committee has located somewhere about the sixth hole. (Farmers who play golf will understand just what I mean.) You make a swipe or two at it with your niblick and only manage to get mud on your face and drive it deeper among the grass roots. Then you forget about your nice new golf shoes and wade in to root it out and you say things that no one would print and think things that no one would say, and when you finally get the ball into play again you wonder whether you will leave your shoes there and go home barefoot or wear them home and let your wife plant ferns in them as part of her scheme of ornamental gardening. Before getting back to the ditching I want to suggest to the rules committees of all golf clubs that there are times and places when a duffer at least should be allowed to use a long-handled shovel. But, to resume, I saw that there was no dainty way to do ditching and stepped in. The removal of a couple of shovelfuls set free a pond that flowed down into another, greatly adding to its size. The obstruction that held this pond was removed in its turn and a still larger one was formed. After this process had been repeated several times I saw that I would either have to swim or get a boat, so I decided to pull for the shore. It was then I noticed my new shoes for the first time. When I looked down I could still see the knots on the laces. Every time I stepped I seemed to be tearing myself up by the roots, but at last the wire fence was reached. Some one ought to get out a patent on wire fences as mud scrapers. They are worth ten times as much as the kind you usually find rusting with disuse beside the farmhouse door. Housewives would do well to have the yard fenced with wire and then the men folks would have no excuse for going into the house without cleaning their boots. But this will never do. All the time we're talking that pond out in the field is getting to look more and more like a lake. Feeling very light-footed, I pranced down to the outlet of the furrow and began operations from that end. Each little pond as it was opened flowed away, and I was able to finish the job without swimming. Possibly the drain-viewers would not report favourably on my kind of ditching, but it is one of the peculiarities of water that it will flow crooked just as readily as it will flow straight.
Now for the most important matter of all. While I was ditching Opportunity knocked at my door. I had a chance to make a fortune, and let it slip away with the oily water in the furrow. Just about the place where the mud was the stickiest and my thoughts were the worst I saw a pool of water that was unmistakably covered with oil. You know this is the district where there was an oil craze in the days when Bothwell and Petrolia were to the speculative what Cobalt is now. It is suspected that oil exists under many parts of Ontario, and just now there are strange stories about the mysterious doings of the Standard Oil Company. It is said to be boring in various quarters, and whenever oil is struck the well is plugged and the matter hushed up until the land in the neighbourhood has been acquired. And here I had discovered surface indications of oil! On careful examination I found that the oil-bearing water was coming out of a crawfish hole! Doesn't that fire your imagination? During the dry spell last year a crawfish kept going down and down and down—you know they always go down until they reach water—until at last he struck oil, and the oil gushed to the surface. Think of what a story that would make in a prospectus! Every farmer knows what a crawfish is, and what a hole it will bore, and what could be more likely than that a crawfish should strike oil? "The Crawfish Oil Co., Ltd." That title nicely lithographed on good bond paper should catch the farmers every time. They are just about ripe for another killing, anyway. The lawsuits resulting from the last promotion they were mixed up in are about all settled, and unless somebody takes their money away from them soon they will find throwing it at knot-holes in the fences. I really think I could float "Crawfish, Ltd.," in Toronto if I were not interested in the crops. The right man should be able to clean up quite a pile before Saturday Night got after him, and when that happened he could live up to his title and do the crawfish act. He could crawl into his hole and pull it in after him.
June 18.—It is all very well for Mr. Nash to go around lecturing to the Farmers' Institutes about the value of hawks and telling the boys that they shouldn't shoot them, but when a pair of hen hawks extend their sphere of influence over the chicken yard things are not the same. This is especially true when their taste runs to young turkeys. It is possible to keep chickens penned up until they are able to take care of themselves, but turkeys still have so much of the wild nature in them that they must be allowed to run at large at least part of the time and then the hawks do their deadliest. Judging from the experience of last week it takes about four Christmas dinners to satisfy one brood of young hawks for a day. Which is it going to be? Are poor city people to be deprived of the Christmas dinner or are we to get along without mousing hawks? The Agricultural Department may be able to prove to a nicety that each hawk is worth $17.83 to the farmer, but each young turkey means a possible two-dollar bill, and it doesn't take long at that rate for a hungry hawk to eat its head off. The Department of Agriculture might do more foolish things than to issue a report on hawks v. turkeys. In the meantime, I have oiled up the shotgun and laid in a store of ammunition. I don't know how to realise in cash on the $17.83 that each hawk is worth to me, but I do know how to sell turkeys.
The fine weather to-day has brought to light an unexpected state of affairs in the fields. During the wet, cold days of the past weeks every one seemed to think that all growth had stopped. On the contrary, everything seems to have been growing lustily. The hay is knee-deep, and the pasture up to the horns of the cattle. That old expression about the pasture being "up to the horns" should probably be retired on a pension, as all respectable cattle are now dehorned. Spring crops could not possibly look more promising, and as the comet seems to be safely out of the way the harvest will probably come to us as usual. Nature certainly does seem to have a way of carrying out her share of the yearly contract. Man gives the seed and the labour and she seldom fails to give growth and the harvest. It is about the only kind of contract into which man enters in which the party of the second part can always be depended on to deal fairly.
June 20.—One day last week a big maple in the woodlot came crashing down when not a breath of air was stirring. As the idea was fixed in my mind that trees are never uprooted except by high winds and storms, it was a surprise to have one topple over when everything in nature was quiet. On going to investigate I found that an apparently sound tree over two feet in diameter had fallen and "lay full many a rood." An examination revealed the fact that it was dead in the heart and the decay showed even in the broken branches, though it was covered with leaves and clusters of winged seeds. The upturned roots that rose like a wall showed that all the central roots had rotted off and, except for the live fibres at the outer rim, the tree had merely been sitting on the ground. It was easy to see what had caused the disaster. The ground was so thoroughly saturated with water that the little roots had lost their grip on the sand and mould, and as the tree had always leaned a little to the south-west it finally lost its balance and went over. After having braved the storms and winds for at least a century it had tumbled over on a still summer morning—a clear case of arboreal euthanasia. The hole from which its roots had been lifted had immediately filled with water, showing plainly how its foundations had been sapped. While looking at the wrecked giant I remembered having read in one of John Burroughs' essays that when one is in the great natural forests branches can be heard breaking off and trees falling even on the stillest days. When the trees mature they must go down like the grass that numbers less days than they do years. Turning from the fallen patriarch I took some satisfaction in finding that the young trees I planted this spring are looking thrifty and give abundant promise of filling any gaps that occur among the veterans of the woodlot. This has been an ideal year for tree-planting, as there have been plenty of showers, and at no time has the weather been scorchingly hot. Every seedling I examined was making a good growth, and it looks as if most of the two thousand and five hundred that were planted with much groaning and backaches have a fair chance of living. All the catalpas were winter-killed at the top, but they are putting out a strong growth from the root, and the pines, soft maples, white ashes, chestnuts, and elms are doing wonderfully. The chestnuts, with their brightly varnished leaves, are looking especially attractive. I guess we can spare the big maple that fell, and cut it into firewood without undue mourning.
I wish I had a gift for statistics. If I had I think I could learnedly evolve a lesson from this business of farming and would be able to discourse on it profitably. Now that the rush of seeding is over, I am beginning to wonder vaguely who is going to get the profits from this work. As nearly as I can figure it out I shall be lucky if I get back the money invested in rent, seed grain, and labour and perhaps a day labourer's wages for myself: and yet, if all goes well, there should be enough of the raw materials of food—oats, corn, potatoes, apples, and garden truck—produced to feed several old-fashioned families. There should be a fine profit for that, even if the consumers got it at a little over the cost of production. Who is going to get the profits? There is a great chance for some one who has a proper grasp of business conditions to reverse the story of Macaulay's charwoman who set so many obedient workers in motion when she ordered her dish of tea. He should take the case of the farmer and show how many people he helps to make profits when he tills his land. Let us consider the orchard for a moment. When we got busy with that we had to buy sulphur and lime and no doubt had to pay prices that would give dividends on watered stock in a sulphur trust and a lime trust. I do not know whether those commodities are handled by trusts, but if they are not it is because some promoter has overlooked an opportunity. That one act of getting materials for the lime sulphur spray would cause activity among the sulphur miners of Sicily and the lime burners of Canada. It would also give employment to sailors and railroad workers and swell the profits of corporations that must make profits in spite of extravagance and wastefulness. To protect themselves they create monopolies and charge as much as the traffic will bear, and the man who uses their material must pay his share of it all. But I should be writing all summer if I tried to suggest even a few of those who will be helped by the work of the farmer. Let us pass on to the final stage. When the apples are ready to be sold barrels must be secured from some probable cooperage trust that gets its materials from a lumber trust and a nail trust. The apples must be shipped over a railroad that was built in a way that made millions for promoters and contractors and the freight rates must pay dividends on what was stolen and wasted as well as on what was legitimately invested. As nearly as I can see it, the farmer's profits must go to pay every form of waste and extravagance and extortion in the business world. And the part of this burden that he is not able to bear is placed on the ultimate consumer of his products, who, as a rule, cannot afford it any more than the farmer. Looking at matters in this way, it amazes me to think that every attempt to regulate the operations of the banks and Big Business at once meets with such an outcry of protest. Surely those who have to bear the burdens should have something to say about the amount of these burdens. The farmer of the present day is compelled to use as much intelligence, education, thrift, and business foresight as any business man if he is to keep his head above water and he is compelled to bear the whole burden of his own mistakes and waste and extravagance. Why should not business men be placed on the same footing? If you take the trouble to figure it out you will find that the burden of every failure and mismanagement in the business world finally falls on the farmers and consumers of the country. Business men may fail and lose all, but in the end every cent of their losses must be paid to society as a whole by the workers. It is about time that our captains of industry and finance were awakened from their dreams. Those who make their profits from the white shirt business of distribution should be compelled to bear burdens as well as the men who do the cowhide boot and overall work of production. The farmer is compelled to take what is offered for his products and pay what he is asked for what he buys. As it is impossible for farmers to protect themselves by forming a trust and securing a monopoly of the necessaries of life, it seems to me that they are quite within their rights in demanding that others be prevented from doing such things. They have to do all their work on a competitive basis, and there is no reason that others should not be forced to do the same. The ghastly joke of the whole unjust arrangement is that it is largely the money of the farmers, deposited in the branch banks, that is used to finance corporations that stifle competition and make the farmers pay profits on their watered stock and mismanagement. This system has been the growth of only the past few years. I wonder how long it is going to keep on growing.
The season of picnics is once more at hand, and the Sunday school children are on the tiptoe of anticipation. Before the business goes any further I wish to protest in the most public and emphatic way against these new-fangled, snobbish, strife-breeding basket picnics. There are no picnics like the old-fashioned kind where they set up rough board tables of interminable length and piled on them the dainties of the countryside. Social distinctions were wiped out and for one day all men were free and equal and the children usurped the reins of power. At these basket picnics you are apt to see the freckle-faced boy standing somewhere outside the hunger-line, waiting for some one to hand him a sandwich or a cruller that is chiefly hole. In the happier days of my earliest recollections matters were different. The freckle-faced boy edged between the legs of the grown-ups, and got a seat at the first table at the right hand of the minister. That was not because he of the freckles reverenced the cloth. By no means. He knew that from the point of vantage which he occupied he would get the second helping of every good thing that was provided. The woman who had a particularly succulent custard pie or a pound of cake that was all raisins would invariably begin by offering the first slice to the minister, and then he of the snub nose and freckles would be right in line for the second helping. Rah! for the old-fashioned picnics. At least the boys and ministers approved of them, and, come to think of it, it is no wonder that Hufeland, in his Encyclopædia of Insurance, mentioned ministers as especially unfavourable risks, because so many of them die young from indigestion. His tables were prepared before the coming of the basket picnics. The cloth may have succumbed, but the snub-nosed boy throve mightily. Rah! for the long tables! Rah! for the free lemonade, and down with your basket picnics.