290 
AMERIOAI^ AGRICULTURIST, 
[July 
French Farming. 
France is one of the richest agricnltiiral coun¬ 
tries of Europe. Its two hundred and four thou¬ 
sand five hundred square iniies of area, produce 
both temperate and sub-tropical crops. The olive, 
the mulberry, and tlie vine flourish in the south, 
and iu the north and northwest (the most fertile 
THE PBOPEIETOK. 
part of Europe), the wheat and beet-root are the 
staple crops. Tlie latter is a most important pro¬ 
duct, as it is upon it that tlie sugar suppl}' of the 
country mainly depends. Beet-root sugar first be¬ 
came known iu France when the wars of the first 
Napoleon closed the Empire to importations from 
America. Its manufacture is now one of the great 
industries of the country. 
Unlike England, France is a country of small 
proprietors. The great revolution wrested the 
vast estates from their hereditary owners, and 
threw them into the market. They were then 
broken up and purchased piecemeal, and though 
many large properties have been gathered together 
since then, their number is small compared with 
that of the individual farms. The result of this 
though he may be a careful main, does not stint 
himself of necessities. He lives well, and he edu¬ 
cates his children. In France matters are different. 
Hard work and frugal fare are the rule with the 
French countryman. The “proprietor,” as he is 
called, the master of the great farm, lording it over 
herds of fat cattle and fleecy sheep, docs not pam¬ 
per his body. On market days you see him at the 
village iun, admired and envied. He wears, as a 
holiday outfit, a clean blouse over his white shirt, 
with its tall collar, around which a satin tie is 
twisted; his pantaloons are of shiny broadcloth, 
his shoes of strong, tine leather, without a patch, 
and he carries a great silver-headed cane. He takes 
double as many lumps of sugar iu his coffee as an¬ 
other man, talks in a blustering voice, and is uni¬ 
versally respected and feared. These proprietors 
form a very rich and powerful class, but they are 
often ignorant to an incredilde degree. Tiiey 
grow rich simply because the people beneath them 
are more ignorant than themselves. 
To the misery of the poor in the French agricul¬ 
tural districts, no mere description can do justice. 
Like the condition of tlie English agricultural 
laborer, their’s is one of black, hopeless privation. 
There are sections in which meat is an unknown 
article of diet to them. At best they get a scrap of 
it, and that of the cheapest kind, once a week. 
Bread of the poorest quality, and potatoes, form 
their staples of diet. The bread is generally baked 
iu batches to last several weeks, and it is eaten 
even when bitter with mould. In the mountain 
districts of France, the agricultural poor supply the 
place of potatoes with a fungus picked iu the 
woods, which is of a kiud too coarse for market. 
Thousands of the small farmers, however, live 
from choice, quite as poorly as their laborers. The 
miserly instinct is a characteristic of some of the 
people. They save at the expense of their bodies 
and their minds. All that they raise iu a condition 
fit to eat is sold; the rest they live on. The agricul¬ 
tural districts of France are very wealthy in money 
hoarded away by people whom one would not sus¬ 
pect of being anything but beggars, if they were 
encountered on the high-road. The holiday suit 
often lasts the farmer a lifetime. He only wears it 
on occasions of show, and is not ashamed of his 
working ciothes. The types of country life in ' 
France are probably distinct from those of any 
other country iu the world. In some sections, the I 
plow. With small farms .and cheap labor, such a 
method is possible, but it wouid make France a 
new country for the farmer, if it was plowed up 
from end to end like one of our great farms. Amer¬ 
ican tools find little favor with the French farmer 
as yet. There are a few in use, and they are appar¬ 
ently regarded as curiosities. We once passed a 
group of fifty people gathered at a roadside in Nor¬ 
mandy, to watch the working of an American plow. 
French farmers are very litigious. They go to- 
law at the slightest pretext—for a bundle of fag¬ 
gots, or a few bunches of grapes. This has doubt¬ 
less given existence to the garde cliampeire, a 
sort of rural policeman, whose duty it is to keep 
guard over the fields, and watch for tresspassers, 
I and who is constantly called upon to render official 
! service to the farmers. Politically the farmers 
I form a powerful and important class, .and they are 
canvassed at every election by rival agents from 
the cities. As a rule, they are conservative. All 
they want of a government, is for it to give them 
peace and a good market. Given these, they are 
satisfied to be ruled as the government chooses. 
In France, as in England, the first lessons of 
THE MARNE. — Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
condition of affairs, is that while in England 
wealth centres in the manufacturing districts, and 
the great cities, in France it is generally diffused 
over the whole country. In England the farmer 
pays heavy taxes and heavy rent. In France, he 
pays heavy taxes but no rent. He saves money, 
and there are few farmers indeed, who are not sm.all 
capitalists. The extremely frugal habits of the 
agricultural people of France, aid in bringing about 
tills result. In England, as iu America, the farmer. 
men and women dress according to their employ¬ 
ments, so that you can distinguish between the 
field and the stable laborer, the dairy women, and 
the house servant at sight. 
The various implements now in use on the finest 
farms in France, would be considered old-fashioned 
across the channel. In the best sections, the 
plow is yet little better than that which the Egyp¬ 
tian uses to scratch the soil. On very many farms, 
the spade and hoe are made to do duty for the 
childhood are labor. The babies are made scare¬ 
crows of, and set to w.atching the geese; children 
of larger growth drive the lean swine, which look 
like dogs in their meagreness, and drudge in the 
barn-yards and the fields. The writer once had 
a boy pointed out to him as the brightest had in a 
little French village. When asked in what his 
brightness consisted, the proud parent pointed out 
a garden patch next to the house, and said : “ He 
raises that, filled every inch, with peas every year.” 
