1881 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Tim Bunker—Agin, Changing Base. 
Mr. Editor :—The tea-drinking last even¬ 
ing was at Deacon Smith’s, and some whole¬ 
some truths were dropped among the crumbs 
that may profit some of your readers, who 
are discouraged and most ready to sell out. 
The Deacon started the conversation after 
the waffles had been passed, and said: “I 
have been watching it for a good many years, 
and it has seldom happened that a farmer 
makes a change of base for the better.” 
“ Then how do you account for the fact that 
so many are leaving the farm and goiifg to 
the cities and villages ? ” asked Pastor Spooner. 
“ Here, in our Commonwealth, the census 
returns show that over 12,000 people have 
moved out of our 75 exclusively agricultural 
towns in the last decade, and that the only 
increase of population is in the cities and 
villages. The same state of things exists in 
all the older States. In the opinion of these 
men, certainly, it was a good thing to quit 
the farm and try something else.” 
“ No doubt they thought so,” continued the 
Doctor,” but I’ll bet you a shad the majority 
of them have altered their minds before this, 
and wish they were back again on the farms 
they deserted. It is the easiest thing in the 
world for a man to be mistaken, especially a 
farmer who lives four or five miles from the 
post-office, gets his mail once a fortnight, 
and don’t read the American Agriculturist or 
any other journal, and keep posted about his 
business. He is all the while groping in the 
dark, gets discouraged, and thinks anything 
must be better than cultivating the soil. 
There was Jo. Timson from the North town, 
you remember, that came on to Hookertown 
Street to live about ten years ago. He got a 
contract to carry the mail between Shadtown 
and the White Oaks, and thought his forture 
was made. On the farm he had plenty of 
milk, butter, cheese, eggs, poultry, fruit, 
made all his meat and breadstuffs, and 
enough beside to pay his store bills. In 
Hookertown he had to pay for house rent, 
fuel, in addition to all the good things he 
raised, and the result of his year’s experiment 
was, that he got in debt and went back to the 
farm a wiser and more contented man. 
There is no doubt of the fact that there is a 
great deal of discontent upon the farm, as 
there is among our village population. The 
villager who lives from hand to mouth has 
but a little to move, and a single team takes 
all his worldly goods from one factory village 
to another in a day. He has never had a per¬ 
manent home, never owned land, and seldom 
known fulness of bread. The change brings 
no new hardships or privations, and it mat¬ 
ters little to him whether he live in one vil¬ 
lage or another. Daily bread, cheap clothing, 
fuel and shelter are about all that he has 
known of comfort, and all that he can reason¬ 
ably expect. All that this man has, or 
aspires to, is already in possession of the 
farmer, and is as secure for the future as 
anything earthly can be. His farm furnishes 
him with nearly all the necessaries of life, 
and many of its luxuries, and a surplus of 
products to exchange in the near markets for 
such superfluities as meet his tastes. These 
may be indefinitely multiplied almost, by the 
hand of the diligent. The factory hand is 
frequently out of work, and he knows only 
the specialty by which he gains his bread. 
The tiller of the soil has occasion to call no 
man master. His bread and water are sure, 
395 
and the latter is a purer article than Cochit- 
uate or Croton, if the microscopists tell the 
truth. Every day in the year lias its ap¬ 
pointed labor, and he never need waste an 
hour waiting for another man’s pleasure to 
give him a job. The air, the sunlight, rains, 
frost, all work for him as well as his beasts 
of burden, and minister to his wealth. Why 
should one so independent exchange freedom 
for dependence and servility of city life?” 
“Yet, Doctor,” saidMrs. Bunker, “ you ped¬ 
dle pills for a living, and dwell in a village.” 
“I do,” replied the Doctor, “but I give 
medical advice to farmers, who are good pay, 
and thus I am about as firmly rooted in the 
soil as the farmers themselves. Besides, Mrs. 
Bunker, you know, improved husbandry is 
as contagious as small-pox, speaking profes¬ 
sionally, and it is quite impossible to live in 
a community where Pastor Spooner preaches 
in his pulpit Sundays, and in his garden the 
rest of the week, and Esq. Bunker writes for 
the papers, and Deacon Smith and other good 
farmers furnish the raw material for his 
essays, without catching the disease and be¬ 
ginning to raise your own fruits and vegeta¬ 
bles. I should have been a dull scholar not 
to have learned something in all these years 
in a school of husbandry like Hookertown.” 
“Well, Doctor,” asked Pastor Spooner, 
“What is your remedy for this unsettled 
state of our agricultural towns ? I have been 
boiling the time would come when the boys 
bom and brought up in my parish would be 
content to follow the plow and stick by the 
homestead, but nothing seems to arrest this 
drift of the rural population from their homes. ” 
“ I suppose it cannot be wholly arrested,” 
said the Doctor. “It may, however, be 
stayed by the diffusion of knowledge. Those 
who are bred upon the farm know little of 
city life, except what is gleaned from 
papers and books, and these often are 
wanting or are little read, for want of leis¬ 
ure or inclination to read. City life is a 
world of romance, and the conditions of 
existence there are poorly represented by our 
summer visitors, in holiday attire, bent on 
having a good time through the sunny days 
of vacation. If the young rustic could see 
these business men at their tasks, and know 
something of their strain and worry, of the 
uncertainties of trade, of the small proportion 
of successful business men, of the enormous 
waste of human life in cities, of the vice, 
filth, and poverty, that center there, the ro¬ 
mance would be dissipated and better views 
of life would prevail.” 
The Doctor’s head is level on farming, 
whatever may be said of his pills, and not 
much can be said against these, for they are 
very small. The draft which the cities and 
villages are making upon our farms is not an 
unmixed evil. Every family that locates in 
the city becomes a consumer of the farmer’s 
products, and enhances the value of his labor. 
It diversifies human industry, and contrib¬ 
utes largely to the .prosperity of the Com¬ 
monwealth. We need cities and villages 
quite as much as we need farms ; men of the 
professions, merchants, and mechanics, as 
well as the tillers of the soil. The relative 
proportion of city and country population 
should be such that every citizen should have 
profitable employment, and every cultivator 
a good market for his surplus products. At 
present the proportion is out of balance, and 
multitudes in our cities have no assured 
means of living, and suffer the ills of poverty 
until they come to the almshouse. Many of 
these idlers might find employment and be 
self-sustaining in the country, and the drift 
of our population seeking homes should be 
toward the country, rather than toward the 
city. Most tillers of the soil, who make a 
change of base for the city, or for some 
easier method of subsistence, labor under 
strong delusion. With few exceptions, we all 
have to eat our bread in the sweat of the face, 
and there is no case and comfort in our de¬ 
clining years, but by patient industry, what¬ 
ever our calling may be. All our history 
shows that the road to competence is shorter 
and surer by way of the farm than by any 
other route. But you say, ‘ 1 1 have nothing 
but my hands and brains, no capital, no credit, 
nothing by which I can do business for my¬ 
self.” What else has the clerk or the me¬ 
chanic that goes to the city. He has to 
show his capacity for business, wait long years 
for the accumulation of capital, and to estab¬ 
lish credit, and only one in twenty of the 
multitudes that drift thitherward win the for¬ 
tune they seek. All facts are against a change 
of base. Wc must learn to labor and to wait. 
IIookeHoum. C't., [Yours to command, 
September 1,1881. ( Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
A Method of Raising A Beef. 
Mr. C. A. Thresher, Shawnee Co., Kan., 
gets many good ideas about farm operations 
from the pages of the American Agriculturist, 
and wishes to contribute his mite in this 
direction. He sends a sketch of a method of 
A METHOD OF RAISING A BEEF. 
raising a beef, which he describes as follows : 
“ The device is in shape much like an old- 
fashioned ‘saw-buck,’ with the lower rounds 
between Iho legs omitted. The legs, of which 
there are two pairs, should be about 10 feet 
long, and set bracing, in the manner shown 
in the engraving. The two pairs of legs 
are held together by an inch iron rod, 5 
or 6 feet in length, provided with threads 
at both ends. The whole is made secure by 
means of two pairs of nuts which fasten 
the legs to the connecting iron rod. A 
straight and smooth wooden roller rests 
in the forks made by the crossing of the 
legs, and one end projects about 1C inches. 
In this two auger holes are bored, in which 
levers may be inserted for turning the roller. 
The rope, by means of which the beef is 
raised, passes over the roller in such a way 
that in turning, by means of the levers, 
the animal is raised free from the ground. 
When sufficiently elevated, the roller is fast¬ 
ened by one of the levers to the nearest leg. 
