1873.] 
American agriculturist. 
4rll 
One thing about this farm (and the same is 
true of nearly all farms in Holland) strikes the 
American eye very oddly. There was but one 
building of any importance on the whole farm 
—an enormous broad-roofed building, with a 
“hooded” gable at the front end, and all cov¬ 
ered with red tiles. The front part is the 
house—spacious and comfortable, and with 
some rare bits of old furniture and Japanese 
pottery, and some fine books, which gave it an 
air of decided interest Back of this (and open¬ 
ing into it), occupying the whole width of the 
building, was the cow-stable, with two rows of 
mangers and water-troughs flanking a central 
alley which is floored with bricks. The water- 
troughs are simply depressions or gutters at the 
sides of this alley, and are also of brick. They 
are filled from a pump at one end, and the 
water is let off (at pleasure) at the other. The 
cows stand on a raised earthen floor, which has 
a brick wall to support its rear part. Behind 
them is a deep manure trough, which retains 
the solid droppings and allows the urine to 
flow to a liquid manure cistern, which accumu¬ 
lates all the liquid refuse of the establishment, 
and which has a pump for filling the tank cart 
for sprinkling the meadows. During summer, 
when the cattle are constantly in the field, the 
earthen floor is covered with handsome Dutch 
tiles. At the time of our visit this stable was 
so scrupulously clean and bright that we mis¬ 
took it for a huge milk-room. 
Back of the stable (in the loft over which 
the cheeses are seasoned) are the hay loft, the 
cheese factory, horse stables, wagon house, tool 
sheds, etc. To our American ideas, this close 
contiguity of stable and dwelling seemed at 
least odd, but it is the universal custom in this 
almost absurdly clean and well washed land, 
even among the wealthiest farmers, and there 
are many who count their riches by hundreds 
of thousands. Indeed, in some of the richer 
parts of Friesland and Groningen, the evidences 
of prosperity take a very absurd form. It is 
not unusual to find two fine pianos in the house, 
though there is no pretense of allowing the 
daughters to learn to play them (they are need¬ 
ed in the dairy); and it is said that some of the 
rich colza growers use silver tea-kettles and 
gold table-service:—using them in the rude mode 
of life to which they have been bred, and which 
they w r ould scorn to change for anything more 
refined. They love to surround themselves 
with the evidences of wealth, but they seem 
careless of the real advantages that it is the 
legitimate office of wealth to secure. Indeed, 
the Dutch farmer, in his barbaric way, has some 
of the peculiarities of some of the farmers of 
other places which shall be nameless. He fan¬ 
cies himself to be personally more admirable 
than he would if he knew more of the outside 
world; and he attaches undue importance to 
the simple possession of much money. 
I think that in the processes of agriculture, 
and especially in the matter of farm implements, 
we could teach the farmers of Holland more 
than they can teach us. At the same time, in 
the two arts of making cheese and (most im¬ 
portant of all) of getting an immense yield 
from small areas, we might with advantage sit 
at their very feet. 
As farmers and as a people we can learn 
from them one lesson of the utmost value— 
that is in the matter of making the waste wet 
places of the earth to blossom like the rose. 
The hundreds of thousands of acres of marsh 
lands along our sea-boards and our river bottoms 
need far less outlay than the Dutch morasses 
to rival the wonderful fertility to which they 
have attained; and we can learn from them 
the best manner of making the reclamations. 
- ■«»< - ■— ►-<£> -- 
The Transportation of Grain, 
In the division of labor, which is a necessity 
in a civilized community, it becomes the part 
of one class to produce food and of another to 
distribute it. Without the producer the distri¬ 
buter or transporter of produce could not exist, 
and without the transporter the producer would 
be entirely helpless in the midst of an over¬ 
whelming abundance. Surrounded with his 
useless crops he would want for every other 
necessary of existence, and he would at once 
descend to the condition of a savage—even be 
restricted to eating the simplest food and 
drinking water. Being thus mutually depend¬ 
ent it is necessary that the producer should 
know exactly the whole duty performed by the 
transporter, that this latter may not be consid¬ 
ered as an interloper who taxes the labor of the 
farmer and mulcts him of a portion of his hard- 
earned remuneration without giving an equiva¬ 
lent for it. In this article we propose to follow 
a cargo of grain from the western gathering 
point until it is fairly launched on its sea voy¬ 
age to supply our customers in Europe. 
In the first place, no intelligent farmer sup¬ 
poses for a moment that it would be possible 
for him to seek these customers himself, or 
that it would be possible to ship 8, small cargo 
of grain 5,000 miles without entirely eating up 
its value in expenses or cost of transportation. 
This business must be done in bulk and on the 
largest scale to be done at all. The compara¬ 
tively insignificant crops of even the largest far¬ 
mers must be gathered together from a thousand 
points, and all be brought to a great shipping 
center. Just as a thousand rills tend towards 
one stream, and that with a thousand others to 
the great ocean, so a thousand streams of grain 
constantly flow from local sources, the farms 
being the springs from whence they rise, and 
the smaller elevators at the local stations along 
the railroads being their gathering points, 
whence they flow to the great shipping points 
of Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis, these 
again all flowing towards the Atlantic. The 
millions of bushels there gathered into the im¬ 
mense elevators from the railroad cars are 
either stored to await facilities for shipment or 
are at once transferred to the Lake vessels, 
either sail vessels or steam-ships, and started 
upon their Eastern voyage. A very large por¬ 
tion of the Western grain goes through to the 
Atlantic ports by railroad cars, but the largest 
portion of it passes by way of the lakes through 
Buffalo and the Erie Canal, although this 
avenue is closed for several months in the year. 
The cost of shipment from Chicago to Buffalo is 
this season 15 cts. a bushel for wheat or corn, and 
the charges at Chicago incident to the passage 
of the grain through the elevators are 31- cents. 
Arrived at Buffalo the grain is transferred from 
the vessels to the elevator or directly to the 
canal boats at a cost of If cent more. The 
method of this transferring is shown in fig. 1. 
When on board the canal boats it is started on 
its winding way slowly towards Hew York 
(fig. 2) at a further cost of 12f cents per bushel. 
The repeated transfers, although they cost a 
few cents for the handling of the grain, are an 
advantage rather than otherwise. Grain in 
bulk is apt to heat and mold and become seri¬ 
ously damaged or unfit for use as food. The 
repeated transfers obviate this difficulty, and 
not only aerate and dry the grain, but in its 
passage through the elevators it is passed 
through screens and blowers by which much 
dirt is removed from it. The total cost between 
Chicago and Hew York is thus seen to be 324 
cents, although large shipments are often con¬ 
tracted for at less rates; for instance, only veiy 
recently transportation of a lot of 20,000 bush¬ 
els was contracted at 29 cents a bushel, and 
27 cents was paid for another large lot. But 
one serious feature of this business of trans¬ 
portation consists in the delays necessary. Re¬ 
cently 1,600,000 bushels of grain were awaiting 
transportation at Chicago, and the voyage on 
the Erie Canal usually occupies three weeks. 
However, the delays upon the canal and the 
slow progress made are very often less than 
upon railroads at this season, when business is 
crowded. Besides, the boat carrying 8,000 
bushels is a much more convenient method of 
carriage than a railroad car carrying 400 bush¬ 
els. One boat is equal to a train of twenty cars, 
and the train generally becomes separated on 
the way, rarely coming through whole, and in 
this way the more rapid railroad transit is often 
the slower of the two in the end. In fact, the 
value of the Erie Canal to the Western farmers 
is Anry much underestimated. On it their ex¬ 
istence mainly depends. Without it their vast 
crops would lie rotting on their fields. If the 
present railroads were more than doubled they 
could not take the whole grain shipped east¬ 
ward. Since its opening, twenty-three years 
ago, the Erie Canal has carried nearly 120 mil¬ 
lions of tons of freight, which is nearly double 
the amount of the whole tonnage of all the ves¬ 
sels from foreign countries which have entered 
Hew York in the same period, and is nearly 
three-fourths of all the foreign tonnage enter¬ 
ing all United States ports in that time. The 
canals of Hew York are on the whole 900 miles 
in length, and the railroads are four times as 
long; yet in 1872 the canals in 7£ months of 
navigation carried 48 per cent of the whole 
freight passing through the State, while the 
railroads in 12 months carried 52 per cent. 
What the West would do then without the 
canals of the State of Hew York is very diffi¬ 
cult to imagine, and these facts open up a mat¬ 
ter for consideration which is of the greatest 
importance at this time, when this vast question 
of transportation is under discussion. 
After its slow but sure progress through the 
canals the grain reaches Hew York, and on its 
arrival, which has been already calculated for 
to an hour by the shipper there, who has been 
informed all along of its daily whereabouts, it 
is either taken to the elevators at the Erie basin 
for storage, or is gathered, together with other 
boatloads, into a “tow” by a steam-tug (fig. 3) 
and moved to the ship ■ which already lies at 
the dock awaiting it. In this' latter case a 
floating elevator is employed (fig. 4). This is 
an unwieldy, top-heavy looking machine built 
upon a steam vessel, the engine of which both 
moves the vessel and works the elevator. 
Here, ranged with the barge on one side and 
the ship on the other, this elevator raises the 
grain from the hold of the barge, cleans and 
winnows it once more, and passes it by means 
of a long spout into the hold of the ship. 
Barge after barge is brought up and emptied, 
until one or two thousand tons are transferred 
to the vessel’s hold. There it is fastened down 
by a covering of planks and timbers so that 
the rolling and pitching of the ship may not 
cause it to move so as to disturb the vessel’s 
