Vermont: A Study of Independence

by Rowland Evans Robinson

Dairy products have largely increased, so that now they are far more important than wool among the exports, and almost everywhere the broad foot of the Jersey, the Ayrshire, the Shorthorn, and the Holstein has usurped the place of the "golden hoof."

The butter and cheese of the State were in good repute even in the primitive days of the earthen milkpan, the slow and wearisome dash-churn, and the cheese-press that was only a rough bench and lever, as rude in construction as the plumping-mill, and when a summer store of ice was a luxury that the farmer never dreamed of possessing. The simplest utensils and means were in vogue, and modern devices and improved methods were unknown. The good, bad, and indifferent butter of a whole township went as barter to the village store, where with little assorting it was packed in large firkins, and by and by went its slow way to the city markets, in winter in sleighs, in the open seasons on lumbering wagons or creeping boats, with cargoes of cheese, pork, apples, dried and in cider sauce, maple sugar, potash, and all yields of farm and forest. Even after such long journeying, the mixed product of many dairies retained some flavor of the hills that commended it to the palates of city folk, and was in favor with them.

Cheeses were not packed, as now, each in its own neat box, but four or five together in a cask made especially for the purpose, whose manufacture kept the cooper busy many days in the year. His wayside shop, with its resonant clangor of driven hoops and heaps of fresh shavings piled about it, distilling the wholesome odor of fresh wood, was a frequent wayside landmark, now not often seen. Cheese was the chief product of the dairy, and was always home-made, while now it is almost entirely made in factories, to which the milk of neighboring dairies is brought, but by far the larger part of the milk goes to creameries for the making of butter.

As the carding, spinning, and cloth-making went from the household in the day of a former generation, and the title of "spinster" became only the designation of unmarried women, so the final labor of the dairy is being withdrawn from the farm to the creamery and cheese factory, to make an even product, better than the worst, if never so good as the best, of that of the old system, and the buxom dairymaid will exist for coming generations only in song and story.

The enormous mineral wealth of the State lay for years hidden or unheeded, copper and copperas in the hills of Vershire and Strafford, granite in the bald peaks of Barre, slate in long lines of shelving ledges here and there, and marble cropping out in blotches of dull white among the mulleins and scrubby evergreens of barren sheep pastures. Some of these resources developed slowly to their present importance, others have flourished and languished and flourished again, and others sprang from respectable existence into sudden importance.

Copper ore was discovered in Orange County about 1820,[117] and was afterwards mined and smelted in Vershire, in a small way, by a company formed of residents of the neighborhood and styled the "Farmers' Company." In 1853 the mine was purchased by residents of New York, who were granted a charter under the title of "Vermont Copper Mining Company," and they began more extensive operations under the direction of a skilled Cornish miner. In the years which have elapsed since then, the work has at times been actively carried on with excellent results, and fifty tons or more of superior copper produced each month; at times it has languished, till the populous mining village was almost deserted, and neighboring hill and vale, scathed by the sulphurous breath of roast-bed and furnace, became more desolate than when the primeval forest clothed them; again it has seasons of prosperity, when the Vershire vale is as populous with Pols, Tres, and Pens as a Cornish mining town.[118] Granite, upheaved from the core of the world, is found in immense masses in the central portions of the State. At Barre there are mountains of it; though there so overtopped by the lofty peaks of Mansfield and "Tah-be-de-wadso," they bear such humble names as Cobble Hill and Millstone Hill. The pioneer hunters who trapped beaver and otter in the wild streams,[119] and the settlers who here first brought sun and soil face to face, little dreamed that greater wealth than fertile acres bear was held in these barren hills. Yet something of it became known more than half a century ago, and the second State House was built of this Barre granite, hauled by teams nine miles over the hilly roads. For many years the working of the quarries increased only gradually, but within comparatively a few years it has become an immense business. The hills are noisy with the constant click of hammer and drill, the clang of machinery, and the sullen roar of blasts, and the quiet village has suddenly grown to be a busy town, with two railroads to bear away the crude or skillfully worked products of the quarries. In a single year a thousand Scotch families came to this place, bringing strong hands skilled in the working of Old World quarries to delve in those of the New, and a savor of the Scotch highlands to the highlands of the New World.

Slate of excellent quality exists in Vermont in three extensive ranges, one in the eastern part of the State, another in the central, and another in the western. Each is quarried to some extent at several points, but the last named most extensively in Rutland County. Slabs taken from the weathered surface rock were long ago used for tombstones, and may be seen among the sumacs and goldenrods of many an old graveyard, still commemorating the spiritual and physical excellences of the pioneers who sleep beneath them. No quarries were opened until 1845, nor was much progress made for five years thereafter, when an immigration of intelligent Welshmen brought skilled hands to develop the new industry, and made St. David a popular saint in the shadow of the Taconic hills.

The existence of marble in Vermont was known long ago. On the Isle La Motte, a quarry of black marble was worked before the Revolution; and early in the present century, quarries were opened in West Rutland, and worked in rude and primitive fashion, the slabs so obtained being mostly used for headstones. A quarry was opened in Middlebury, and it is claimed that the device of sawing marble with sand and a toothless strip of iron was invented by a boy of that town, named Isaac Markham, though in fact it was known to the ancients and used by them centuries ago. But little more than fifty years ago, the site of the great quarries of West Rutland was a barren sheep-pasture, shaggy with stunted evergreens, and the wealth it roofed was undreamed of, and so cheaply valued that the whole tract was exchanged for an old horse worth less than one of the huge blocks of marble that day after day are hoisted from its depths. The working of these quarries was begun about 1836, and within ten years thereafter three companies were formed and in operation. But the growth of the business was slow, for there were no railroads, and all the marble quarried had to be hauled by teams twenty-five miles to Whitehall, the nearest shipping-point. Furthermore, its introduction to general use was difficult, for though its purity of color and firmness could not be denied, its durability was doubted. Fifty years of exposure in our variable and destructive climate have proved Vermont marble to exceed in this quality that of any foreign country. In 1852 a line of railroad running near at hand was completed, and the marble business of Rutland began to assume something of the proportions which now distinguish it as the most important of the kind on the continent.

One of the most remarkable changes in the commerce of Vermont has been in the lumber trade, which no longer flows with the current of Champlain and the Richelieu to Canada, but from the still immense forests of the Dominion up these waterways to supply the demands of a region long since shorn of its choicest timber. Of this great trade Burlington is the centre, and one of the busiest lumber marts in New England.

The pine-tree displayed on the escutcheon of Vermont is now no more significant of the products of the commonwealth than is the wheat sheaf it bears; for almost the last of the old pines are gone with the century that nursed their growth, and the ponderous rafts of spars and square timber that once made their frequent and unreturning voyages northward have not been seen for more than half a century. The havoc of deforesting is not stayed, nor like to be while forest tracts remain. The devouring locomotive, spendthrift waste thoughtless of the future, the pulp-mill, and kindred wood consumers gnaw with relentless persistence upon every variety of tree growth that the ooze of the swamp or the thin soil of the mountain side yet nourishes.