Part 9

_April 9._--Unless something is done to relieve the scarcity of hired men we may hear of the revival of the press gang, and then the country will be no place for a man whose most strenuous work is done on a typewriter. Farmers are getting positively ravenous for help. And that reminds me that I haven't seen a tramp in two years. They used to be so plentiful along the lines of the railroads that they were a tax on charitably-disposed people, but now I doubt if a tramp could travel a mile in any direction through the country without being gobbled up. He would find every avenue barred with work, and eager employers waylaying him at every corner. A man cannot be idle in the country now unless he has a farm of his own on which to loaf, and even then he must put up "No Trespass" signs. Perhaps that accounts for the migration of the poets to the cities. It would hardly be safe for them to be going around picking flowers, listening to the birds, and rolling up their eyes when the country is full of farm work that is crying to be attended to. And that reminds me that one of them, whose name I shall not betray, has these poignant lines in one of his poems:

"I fear that work before me lies-- Indeed, I see no option, Unless perhaps I advertise: 'An orphan for adoption.'"

_April 12._--It seems that the apple trees get "that tired feeling" in the spring, just like the rest of us, and need a good tonic to put them in shape. As nearly as I could learn from Mr. Clement and Mr. Buchanan, that first application of lime-sulphur wash means much the same to the trees as a dosing of sulphur and molasses does to the boys, and I can tell you right here that it is a whole lot easier to administer. The trees can't squirm and howl and wriggle out of it. They just stand and take their medicine. The lime-sulphur kills the oyster-shell scale, insect eggs, fungi, microbes, etc., and acts as a general constitutional. And it is no particular trick to apply it. As a matter of fact, it looks to me to be about the easiest spring job on the farm. I say "looks," because all I did was to smoke my pipe and look on. Perhaps the other spring jobs seemed harder because I had to put on my overalls and pitch into them myself. But to a man sitting on the fence and smoking while the work is being done spraying doesn't seem a bit hard, even though it may be scientific. And even the science of it is not so very profound. They demonstrated the whole process to me, from carrying the water in buckets to the boiler to spilling what was left over from the barrel when they were done. It was a complete and satisfying exhibition.

To begin with, they unloaded their boiler and explained how to make it and what it cost. It is made from pine boards and a sheet of zinc--the boards for the sides and ends and the zinc for the bottom. Whether it costs $2.50 or $2.80 I cannot remember, and I have lost the envelope on the back of which I made my notes. Anyway, it doesn't matter, for any one who is interested in the work can get the bulletins on "Lime-sulphur Wash" and "Apple Orcharding" from the Department of Agriculture by sending a postal card asking for them. These bulletins contain full and exact explanations of everything that an orchardist needs to know, from preparing the ground for the planting of trees to the packing and marketing of apples. If you have only one tree in the back yard it will pay to get these booklets and they will tell you much more than I intend to take the trouble to tell. But let us get back to our work. After they had set up the boiler they put in it forty gallons of water, which they heated almost to the boiling point. Then they mixed a hundred pounds of sulphur with water till it made a smooth paste and added it to the water in the boiler. After it was thoroughly mixed they began to drop in stone lime until fifty pounds had been added, and the mixture became as much a witch's broth as the one described in _Macbeth_. I found myself unconsciously repeating:

"Double, double toil and trouble, Boil, cauldron, boil and bubble."

It boiled and bubbled all right, but the toil and trouble were not particularly evident. All that was necessary was to keep the mess stirred up with a hoe and to keep it boiling for an hour. Even though making lime-sulphur wash comes under the head of science, I would rather undertake to cook a barrel of it than to make a pot of oatmeal porridge without getting it scorched. No one need be afraid of that part of the work.

When finished, the barrel of mixture, according to the most careful ciphering, cost just $2.80. That included charges for both labour and wood--two things no farmer would think of mentioning. As for the labour, every farmer has a lot of it in his system that is bound to go to waste unless he employs it on some job like this, and he would never think of taking it into account. It is the same with the wood. Why put in a charge for wood when all you need is the tail-board of the gravel box or an armful of bed slats or anything else that is not being used at the time? Still, they insisted on counting in the wood, though they refused to add two cents for the extra tobacco I smoked while watching them and sniffing the brew. The barrel of mixture was strong enough to make eight barrels when diluted to the strength required for the trees. This makes the cost of each barrel of home-cooked wash thirty-five cents. This is an important item, as the commercial wash comes to eighty cents a barrel. It certainly pays the man who has a large orchard to prepare his own materials.

But it was when they began to apply the wash to the trees that I really got into touch with my scientists. After they had explained to me the workings of their spraying outfit, which had cost $27.50, they filled the barrel to which the spraying pump was attached and got busy; and right there they revealed the fact that scientists are just as human as the rest of us. The spraying outfit is fitted with two lines of hose, so that two men can administer the spray at the same time, but they were able to use only one line, as they had lost one of the nozzles. My heart opened to them at once. That was just the way things would be likely to happen if I had tried to do the work myself. And I had a decided advantage of them. If I had lost a nozzle I could blame it on the boys, but all they could do was to admit that they had lost it themselves. After this incident I was no longer abashed by the fact that the work being done was of the kind that is called scientific. The bane of my existence is perfect people who never make mistakes and who always do everything right. When I found that these scientists were human like myself I filled my pipe again and began to take an interest in life. The one hose that was in working order ended in a bamboo pole with a tube inside it. This made it possible for the man doing the spraying to reach the top branches of the trees. Here again the work did not seem hard nor of a kind to need special training. Any one should be able to do it. The nozzle was spouting out a cloud of spray and all that was necessary was to direct it so that the cloud would touch every twig and branch of the tree. Of course, a man had to manage it so that he didn't get sprayed too much himself, for that lime-sulphur certainly had some "zip" to it. I got a couple of whiffs of it, and it is my private opinion that any microbe that could stand up against it without sneezing would be able to "stand unabashed amid the war of elements, the wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds."

After all, it was not the work of spraying that impressed me most about the visit of Mr. Clement, Mr. Buchanan, and Mr. Palmer. They did their work well, and no sensible man can doubt that such work is necessary and profitable. But what is coming over the world when three well-educated, cultured, ambitious young men are doing such work at all? They are of the type of clean-cut, intelligent young fellows that you would have found a few years ago preparing themselves for law or medicine or for a career in the world of business. But here they are teaching farming, talking farming, and looking forward to farming as their life-work. Ever since Cadmus invented the alphabet education has been looked upon as a door of escape from the drudgery of farm work. When I went to school no lesson impressed me more than the one about John Adams and his Latin grammar. When the boy found the grammar too hard his father gave him a job of ditching and he quickly went back to his studies and became President. Moral: Get an education and get out of doing farm work. But here are these young men with their good educations coming back to work the land. Are the farmers of the future to be men of this type? I can hardly believe it, and yet it should be true. Farming is one of the finest occupations in the world if taken in moderation. But it will take more than science and profits to keep young men of this type on the land. They will need a very fine quality of philosophy to enable them to see the true value of things. They will have to learn how to realise the possibilities of their own souls while doing the humble daily tasks. I do not know whether they have a chair of philosophy in Guelph or not, but if they have it should be occupied by some one

"High-rife with old Philosophy And mad with glimpses of futurity."

His course of lectures should be the most important in the college. His work would be to prepare us for a future in which the heavy burdens of the world will be borne by educated men who will understand their rights as well as their work. With such men behind the ploughs, the day of predatory big business will soon come to an end. The men who feed the world will no longer be the slaves of the cunning. But it is still so much easier to make a living by cleverness and cunning that it is hard to believe that the hard work of farming is to be taken over by men of education who will know their own worth and the worth of their work. It is a glorious dream, but the world will have to make more progress in philosophy than it has in science before it comes true. When my scientific friends finally completed their work and left me I felt lonesome and homesick for the outer world for the first time since coming back to the land. In spite of their enthusiasm about farming and farm work, I felt that they belonged to that world rather than to the world in which I am sojourning.

_April 16._--"I've given up the danged farm," said a callow youth this morning in response to a civil question about the progress being made with the spring work. At present he is putting in his time as the village cut-up, and when it really becomes necessary for him to work he'll get a job as cook on a gravel train or as oiler in a garage. He'll live in a boiled horse boarding-house and fill himself with husks and other deleterious substances. The "danged" farm isn't swift enough for him.

Unfortunately there are many in his class, though they express themselves differently. They are travelling the school and college route to the over-crowded professions or going to the city in search of a nice, clean job. "The danged farm" isn't good enough for them.

At this point the observer usually begins to pound the pulpit, but I am in no mood to usurp the prerogatives of the preacher. If fellows of this sort want to leave the country for the city, let them go. There are altogether too many useless people in the country now. There are men spoiling land who ought to be putting in their time as dock-wallopers or at some city occupation that requires no brains. At the same time, there are a lot of struggling doctors, lawyers, preachers, and business men in the cities who have just the education and brains needed to make the best kind of farmers. Don't make any mistake about it. The farming of the future is going to be the best of the learned professions, and the only one in which a man of brains and character can find scope for his individuality and abilities. Farming is about the only man's job left.

The city has changed as much as the country in the last twenty-five years, and it is no longer the place for a man of wholesome ambition. The change is due to two things--machines and organisation. The machines have made trades a thing of the past, and organisation is doing away with individual enterprise. There are no more trades where skilled artisans work in wood or metal or cloth or leather. There are machines now that do the work, and men and women can get jobs to wait on them. You cannot realise what it means to be the slave of such a machine unless you have been one or have seen such slaves at work. Some years ago I was conducted through one of the largest shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts, by its proud proprietor. I could not help noticing the clock-like regularity with which the men and women who were at work performed every motion. In making a shoe there are seventy-two separate operations, and each is made by a different operator with a machine. No one person in all that factory could make an entire shoe. The skill of each individual was confined to one operation, such as sewing in the tongue or pegging on the heel. While we were passing through the factory and the proprietor was explaining to me how things were done, not one of those workers paused or looked up. I commented on their unflagging industry. The proprietor smiled. "I have figured out to a nicety just how many operations can be made in a day by each machine, and have the speed regulated to perform just that number of operations. Of course, the operator can stop the machine if not ready to go on, but he is docked at the end of the day for each operation he misses."

I never was so near being an anarchist in my life as I was while the memory of that incident was fresh in my mind. The workers in that factory were not simply slaves to their employer, but to merciless machines. And that is only a sample of what you can find in any industry that has been perfected along modern lines. In the factories work has none of the charm it had for the old-time artisan who performed every operation himself. It is simply machine-driven drudgery, and the man who thinks that kind of work preferable to work on a farm deserves no better employment.

So much for the physical workers. The case of the mental workers, while apparently better, is really worse, but the subject is a dangerous one to handle. Still enough may be said to suggest some lines of thought. The fact that almost all business enterprises are conducted by organisations or companies has entirely changed the positions of all employees, from office-boy to the president of the company. To parody Tennyson: "The individual withers, and the company is more and more." The shareholders, through their directors, adopt a money-making policy for their company, and that policy must be enforced, no matter how heartless it may be. For instance, I know of a lithographing company which has the excellent rule that it pays for only the work done by its employees. That seems all right, doesn't it? Well, one day I was lunching with the superintendent of manufacture and he was very much depressed. I asked what was troubling him, and he explained:

"One of my best printers has had a hard winter of it on account of sickness in his family. He is an entirely sober, industrious fellow, but I know he has had a hard time to make both ends meet. Well, he had to stay out one day this week to bury his little girl, and when pay-day came he was docked for that day."

"Surely if you called the attention of the president to the case he would have fixed things."

"He couldn't do a thing. It is a rule of the company. All the president could do would be to do what I have done myself--open the man's envelope and put in the pay out of his own pocket."

Now, it is safe to say that not one pious shareholder of that company would justify the treatment that faithful printer would have received if the superintendent had not been foolishly soft-hearted, and yet, as a shareholder, each one would share in the increased dividends caused by such savings. That is only a trivial example of the results of organisation. Ruthless methods of competition and of increasing profits are not adopted from choice by the executive officers, but from necessity. As individuals they would not stoop to do the things they do as officers of a company. Above everything else the company must be successful. No one asks it to be charitable, or kind, or even moral. But every one insists that it must be efficient. As John D. Rockefeller, the greatest of all business organisers, blandly informed the Senatorial Commission which was investigating his business methods: "I am merely a clamourer for dividends." He had nothing to do with the methods by which dividends were secured. What he wanted was dividends, and the employee who failed to provide them would not be long in receiving his discharge.

In the country matters are different. Such machinery as is used only serves to relieve farm work of its drudgery. Seedtime and harvest still have their olden charm. As for organisation, it will be many years before the farmers have enough of it to enable them to get the just returns from their labour. In all their work and business dealings the farmers are their own masters and need not be driven, either in matters of work or conscience. And the way scientific farming is developing the farmer's work can give as much scope to his brain power as any of the learned professions. Neither are the financial returns to be despised. A successful farmer can make as good an income as the average city man. When these things are understood as they should be I expect to see an exodus of intelligent men from the cities to the country, where they can develop themselves physically, mentally, morally, and financially. Indeed, a day may come when we shall hear people preaching: "Boys, don't leave the city."

_April 19._--It is just possible that the hen has been studied too much from a utilitarian or practical point of view. If allowed to pass the succulent broiler stage she is regarded simply as an egg-producing machine, and after a useful life she sinks unsung into the pot-pie or fricassee. If instead of being born a hen she had been born a water wagtail, or some bird of no economic value, her charms and social habits would be embalmed in a Saturday editorial. Her cunning little ways would be closely observed and set down with delicate humour, and exceptional literary grace would be used to give her a niche in _The Globe's_ gallery of nature friends. These thoughts were in my mind as I went out of the house this morning, and, as luck would have it, the first thing that caught my eye was a Buff Orpington that was pursuing the early worm to its lair in a flower bed. The fact that that flower bed is placed where no flower bed should be, and was so placed against my earnest protests, reconciled me to what was going on. I decided at once that the time was favourable for a study of the hen. Betaking myself to a sunny corner of the coal box, I sat down and began to observe. The hen was of robust habit, but apparently in thorough athletic training. The soil in which she was scratching was of the kind that would be given a low classification by a constructive engineer or a Parliamentary investigating committee. It was a sandy loam, and I had to mind my eyes whenever she scattered it in my direction. The first outstanding fact that I gathered was that this particular hen had a definite method of procedure to which she adhered with remarkable singleness of purpose. Lowering her head, she examined the ground first with one eye and then with the other. Then she stepped forward with the confident air of a baseball star going to the bat, scratched once with one foot and then twice with the other. If she scratched first with the right foot she would scratch twice with the left, and _vice versa_. Then she would step back and carefully examine the field of her depredations. If no worm was in evidence she would step forward briskly and repeat the performance. As I had never read this in any book or paper dealing with the hen and her habits, I took out my notebook and began to secure material for a future scientific article. But I was doomed to disappointment. At this moment a door bulged open and an apparition with a broom swooped down on that hen. She fled squawking, and I discreetly slipped around the corner of the house. I might have found it hard to explain why that hen hadn't been shooed away.

There is a wild plum tree in blossom in the woods, the trees are showing faintly green, the meadows and wheatfields are vivid and, even though the weather is chilly, summer is really started. A change of the wind will make everything all right. At the same time no one has any grudge against the raw east wind that has been blowing lately, for it brought much-needed rain. When it comes to furnishing wet weather the east wind is very dependable. I knew it was blowing on Sunday morning when I wakened and heard the rain pelting on the tent. Being drowsy, I decided to stay where I was until the shower passed, but after a couple of hours made up my mind that my case was much like that of the man who sat on the bank of a river and waited for the water to flow past so that he could cross. I should have been there for a day or more if a healthy appetite had not forced me out. It was a glorious rain and will do much to start the crops towards a prosperous harvest. Oats and barley are already showing through the ground and the battle with the weeds has commenced in the garden. The sky signs are now for fine weather and others besides the birds are feeling chirpy. I don't care if I never run to catch a street car again as long as I live.