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Every
great national calamity has the effect of driving men from the cities to
engage in agriculture. Such has been the result of the late war for
the Union. I have been in a position to observe
its operation on the minds of hundreds whom it covered with disaster.
There has been the usual desire to break away from the cities, and settle
in the country. The life-long convictions of my own mind have taken
possession of the minds of others. Property in the cities ceased, for a
time, to be saleable, while farms have been in more general demand than
for years past. Foreign immigration was measurably stopped, because men
fly from convulsions, not to countries where they are to be encountered.
When war desolates the nations of Europe, the people migrate hither to
avoid its horrors; when it desolates ours, they remain at home.
During the late disastrous experiences of city life,
many of my friends upon whom they fell with great severity were free in
their congratulations on my happy change of life. They had been as free in
doubting the propriety of my experiment. Now, however, they looked up to
me as possessing superior sagacity; were desirous themselves of imitating
my example, and sought instruction and advice as
to how they should proceed. Three of them are already located near me; so
that, instead of cutting entirely loose from old asssociates by coming
into the country, I have attracted them into a closer intimacy than ever.
Dear as my home was without them, it is rendered doubly dearer by close
association with long-tried friends.
Location is perhaps the most important
consideration. A cash market all the year round for every variety of
produce that a man can raise, is of the utmost importance to secure. Such
is invariably to be found in close proximity to the great cities; and
there, singularly enough, the wealthiest farmers in the Union will
generally be found. When we go to the extreme North, where their market is
limited, and where they produce only the heavy grains, and grasses,
farming is so little an object that improved places can always be bought
for less than their cost. It is very frequently the same throughout the
West, where so much that is raised upon a farm is valueless; and where,
for even the grains, they have a market which barely pays the expense of
living. The expense incurred in farming can be regulated by the profit of
the crops; and where even no manure is required, the labor has to be
expended, and crops in distant localities often fail to pay the expense of
this labor. Where land will pay for a liberal cultivation, as well as
fertilizing, it is much better, as a farmer must work his stock, and a
certain amount of care is indispensable. The difference in value existing
between those farms near a market and those
remote from it, is enormous. If the mind will consider the immense amount
of produce in the way of fruits and vegetables, which, near a city, will
command the highest prices, and which at a distance are an entire loss, a
conception can be readily formed of what they amount to in dollars and
cents.
Land in Illinois and Iowa can be purchased for a
dollar an acre, but corn is at times of so little value as to be consumed
for fuel. The wheat crop is annually decreasing in its acreable product,
because no one values or applies manure. The West may be the paradise of
the European immigrant, who, having abandoned friends and home, may with
propriety settle in one spot as well as in another; because, go where he
will, he will be sure to find none but strangers. But for residents of our
cities who go thither, very few acquire property by legitimate farming,
even after sacrificing all the tender associations of relatives and
friends whom they leave behind, and enduring hardships and trials of
double severity with those they need encounter if they would consent to
suffer them on lands within thirty miles of their birthplace. If they
become rich, it is by hazardous speculation, or by the rise in value of
their lands. So far as real, practical farming is concerned, it will be
found that the East is incomparably superior to the West; but, so far as
small farmers like myself are concerned, it would be folly to deny this
superiority.
I say nothing as to the superior ease with which
corn and wheat are produced in the two sections, but refer only to
the amount of money that can be realized from an acre there and an acre
here. Beyond question, there are certain crops that are produced with
greater ease in the West than in the East; but of what value is this
superior facility if it does not pay? I have cleared from a single acre of
tomatoes more than enough to buy a hundred and sixty acres in Iowa. If I
had located there, who would have been ready to buy my abundant crop of
berries? The truth is, that it is population that gives value to
land,—population either on it or around it,—to convert it into lots
covered with buildings, or to consume whatever it may produce. The West is
a glorious region for the foreign immigrant, or for him who was born upon
the rugged hill-sides of the Eastern States, but it is not the proper
location for the class for whose instruction these pages have been
written.
Few persons who have been nurtured and educated all
their days in Eastern cities, and who have probably never been more than
fifty miles from home, have any correct idea of what this gigantic West
really is until they reach the spot itself. Why leave the privileges of a
long-established civilization, —the schools, the churches of home,—the
daily intercourse of acquaintances and friends,—merely because land
producing twenty bushels of wheat per acre can be purchased for a dollar,
when that producing twenty times as much in fruit or vegetables can be
had for fifty, and often even for less? I doubt
not there must be many in that region who now wish themselves back in
their old homes.
If my example be worth imitating, land should be
obtained within cheap and daily access to any one of the great cities. If
within reach of two, as mine is, all the better, as the location thus
secures the choice of two markets. In Pennsylvania, all the land around
Philadelphia is held at high prices. Much of it is divided into small
holdings, many of which are rented to market gardeners at prices so high
that none but market gardeners can afford to pay them. Others are worked
by their owners, who live well by feeding the great city. Gradually, as
the city extends in every direction, these small holdings are given up to
streets and buildings, thus enriching their owners by the rise in value.
The truckers move further back, where land is cheaper. But the modern
facilities for reaching the city by railroad have so greatly multiplied,
that they are practically as near to it as they were before. The yield
from some of these small holdings is very large. But the cost of land thus
situated was too great for my slender capital when I began.
Hence I sought a location in New Jersey. There
unimproved land, within an hour of Philadelphia, can be purchased for the
same money per acre which is paid in Pennsylvania as annual rent. For ten
to twenty dollars more, in clearing up and improving, it can be made
immediately productive, as the soil of even this cheap land is far more
fertile than is generally supposed. Thousands of acres of this
description are always for sale, and thousands are annually being
bought and improved, as railroads and turnpikes leading to the city are
being established. Many Germans have abandoned the West, and opened farms
on this cheap and admirably located land, from which they raise
prodigious quantities of fruit and truck for Philadelphia and New York.
Colonies of New Englanders, allured by the early
season, as compared with that of their own homes, the productive soil and
the ready access to market, have settled upon and around the new railroad
just opened, which leads south from Camden through the town of Malaga,
where a large tract has recently been divided into farms of various sizes.
They bring with them all the surroundings of an advanced civilization.
To those with no capital but their own labor and a
determination to conquer success, these lands offer the highest
inducements. Most of them can be had on credit, by men who will settle and
improve, at twenty to thirty dollars per acre, within a little over an
hour's ride to Philadelphia. This tract is distant but a few miles from
the Delaware river, and probably no better could be found. Any number of
locations can be had. Many are already improved by buildings, fencing,
and all the preliminary comforts which cluster round an established home.
The settler may choose between the improved and the unimproved.
But there is a better country north of Camden,
lining the shore of the Delaware, where any number
of locations may be found, improved by buildings, and at moderate
prices, as well as on favorable terms as to payment. Vast progress in
improvement has been made through all this region within ten years. New
towns have been built, new turnpikes constructed, while the great railroad
puts the cultivator in constant connection with the two overgrown cities
at its termini. Land is increasing in value as population flows in. The
margin of the Delaware, from Philadelphia upward, is being lined with
villages, between which new farm-houses and cottages are annually erected;
and the young of this generation will live to see it a continuous
settlement of substantial villas, peopled by the swarms of educated
families which a great human hive like Philadelphia is annually throwing
off. A location within such an atmosphere of improvement must continually
increase in value. The owner will find himself growing richer from this
cause, just as the trucker on the Pennsylvania side has done—not so
rapidly, but quite as surely. An investment in such land, properly
managed, and not permitted to deteriorate, will assuredly pay. My own
little farm is an illustration; for more than once have I been solicited
to sell at double the price it cost me.
I am now looking at the future, as well as at the
present. Yet the apparent anomaly of there being always an abundance of
land for sale in so desirable a district, must not be overlooked. But it
is so throughout our country; there are always and everywhere more
sellers than buyers. It is the same thing
in the cities;
everywhere there is somebody anxious to
sell. It would seem that we either have too much land in this country, or
too small a population. Time alone can produce the proper equilibrium. The
land cannot be increased in quantity, but it is evident that the
population will be. As this is not a treatise either upon land or farming,
but the experience of a single individual, so each claimant for a similar
experience must choose for himself.
But choose as he may,
locate as he will, he must not, as he hopes to succeed in growing the
smaller fruits to profit, locate himself out of reach of a daily cash
market. New York and Philadelphia may be likened to two huge bags of gold,
always filled, and ever standing open for him to thrust in his hand,
provided in the other he brings something to eat. From this exhaustless
fountain of wealth, whole adjacent populations have become rich. The
appetite of the cities for horticultural luxuries has revolutionized the
neighboring agriculture, enhanced the value of thousands of acres, infused
a higher spirit into cultivators, elevated fruit-growing into a science,
and started competition in a long rivalry after the best of everything
that the earth can be made to yield. All this is no spasmodic movement. It
will go on for all future time; but in this grand and humanizing march
after perfection in producing food for man, the careful tiller of the
soil, with moderate views and thankful heart, will be sure to find Ten Acres
Enough.
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