In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

"'Give my roan horse a drench,' says he; and answers, 'Some fourteen'—an hour after; 'a trifle, a trifle.'"

As civilisation advanced it was found that it was better to protect a number of producers from others and levy tribute from them. In this way a military aristocracy was developed, and the producers, whose work was really the most important of all in the human problem of existence, became the serfs or slaves of their military over-lords. The fighters gave protection and did the high-toned killing while the serfs produced the necessary food and clothing and attended to all the sloppy work. Developing along these lines it was presently found that killing was too dangerous a matter to leave to individuals, so it was taken over by the state, which organised armies, diplomatic corps, and all the other machinery of good government. The problem of protection was completely solved to the satisfaction of able and peaceful lawyers, and in some cases, when enemies were plentiful and threatening, the government established a system of conscription, by which all the able-bodied men were trained to military service, so that if at any time they should be needed for the protection of their country they could go into service at once. This development has not yet reached the new world, though we are not without military sages who advocate it. Certainly a country where military conscription is enforced is at all times ready to defend itself against encroachments and plunder.

But while the aristocratic and military side of the problem of existence was being solved the business of food production was left to private enterprise. The common people had to produce for their own living, and naturally produced a surplus which went to feed others who made themselves useful in more delightful occupations, and to pay the taxes needed to carry on the government which protected people in their rights. Now a condition is arising in which the amount of food produced is not sufficient to enable the state to progress harmoniously. People in the more delightful occupations find they have to devote altogether too much energy to earning a living. We seem to be reaching a state where men are struggling wildly to earn money with which to buy food that no longer exists. There is much talk of going back to the land, where people are supposed to produce the necessaries of life with the least possible expenditure of energy, but few of us go and still fewer of us like it when we do go. We find that the work of securing the means of subsistence from Nature is heavy and mussy, and, after all, requires an amount of knowledge and training that is surprising to the city man. But if the people now on the land are unable to produce the food of the nation something must be done. We cannot legislate people back to the land, for that would be trespassing on the rights of the individual. But I see no reason why we should not learn a little from the solution of the military and more aristocratic side of the human problem. Protection and production were of equal importance in the beginning, and why should they not be equal now?

Why should we not have economic conscription instead of military conscription, now that the problem of feeding has become more important than the problem of defence? Why should not every young man and woman in the country be compelled to spend, say, three years in the production of the necessaries of life? This would not only help to relieve the present situation, but would undoubtedly increase the number of intelligent producers and restore society to a normal balance. It has been said that "an army travels on its belly," and this is equally true of a nation. If a nation can resort to conscription to keep up its fighting efficiency, what is to prevent it from resorting to the same means to keep up its feeding efficiency? The two ideas are parallel in principle, only the question of feeding has lagged behind that of protection. This seems to be a time to bring them abreast, and the new world, being the field of economic battles rather than of military battles, should face the situation squarely.

Of course there would be objections on the part of the food producers when the state started in rivalry to them, but we have only to glance back over history to see how universal were the objections to the state taking over the business of fighting and killing. Even yet there are nations where the individual claims the right of the duel to avenge his private wrongs, but the state has established a fairly complete monopoly of killing. In the economic work which I propose it would not be so grasping. It would merely undertake to fit every individual for the struggle of existence. In fact this step would be nothing more than the extension of our present system of compulsory education. It was so that each citizen would be better fitted to make his way in the world that schools were established to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, and other things that I cannot name off-hand, as I do not keep track of the latest educational frills. Now that we are realising the fact that we must have more and cheaper food, why not educate young people along food-producing lines? At the present time a great proportion of our able-bodied citizens would be just about as helpless in the presence of food in its crude state as was the Englishman who was found perishing of thirst beside a river. He could not take a drink because he had no glass.

As making a living, reduced to its elements, simply means having a capacity of securing food and shelter from the raw materials of nature, how could any man be better equipped for the vicissitudes of life than by knowing how to get his own living in this way? Having once acquired the needful training, he could enter the struggle of commercial life, and those cleaner occupations which we all desire, with greater confidence because he would know that if he failed he would still know how to make his living. The average man who fails in the struggle of city life is almost helpless if he tries to go back to the land to get his living from it. He barely knows which end of a hoe to take hold of if he undertakes farm work; and a plough and its workings are mysterious beyond words. He may know all about trust bookkeeping that will baffle an investigating committee, but he cannot milk the brindle cow, and as for planting corn he cannot do it until some one invents a corn-planter that will cough and clear its own throat, because he never fails to jab it into the ground with its mouth open. If he had been taught these things in his youth he would step into his place in the army of workers and be worth board and wages from the beginning.

Of course a plan of this kind would need a great deal of thinking out to make it work right, but I think it could be done without interfering with individual liberty as much as military conscription does. A man may have scruples of conscience about learning the art of war and slaughter, but he can have none against raising cabbages and potatoes. The more I think of it the more feasible it seems to me, but I merely offer it as a suggestion and leave it for others to develop.

July 7.—The children came home from the berry-patch with a stirring account of having seen a skunk—"a pretty striped, little animal," that stood by his hole; conscious of his power and refused to be frightened. Somehow the incident reminded me of coon-hunting, for it is wonderful how many coon-hunts in the old days were brought to an end by a skunk. Even the best trained coon-dogs would sometimes follow a trail that led to a hollow log where a flash of the lantern would reveal a pair of glowing green eyes. As a rule only a formal call was made on Mr. Mephiticus Americanus (the dictionary is not handy, but I think that is his full name), but sometimes the dogs caught him before he reached the log, and for weeks afterwards they were kicked out whenever they tried to lie under the stove, because they smelled like a nicely warmed theatre on a winter evening when the ladies are wearing their costly furs. One encounter with a skunk would ruin a dog's sense of smell for a season and make him so dull scented that he couldn't trail even an automobile (Yes, I know the story about the skunk and the automobile), but if the melons were plentiful coon-hunting went on just the same.

One night the coon-dogs led us into the middle of a tamarac swamp and then lost the trail. As the full dreariness of the situation dawned on us we sat for a breathing spell on a fallen log and talked things over. We were four miles from home, wet, muddy, bruised, and briar-scratched. Moreover, before starting out we had been wearied by a hard day's work at threshing. Presently the man who had suggested the coon-hunt made a little speech befitting the occasion that was interrupted only by frantic slaps at mosquitoes.

"If any one had told me ten years ago," he began in slow, measured tones, "that on the seventeenth of October of this year I would be sitting on a wet log in the middle of a swamp at one o'clock in the morning, I would have called that—man—a—liar."