Vol. LXVI. No. 3017. ■ NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 23, 1907. 
WEEKLY, ifl.00 PRK YEAR 
THE CITY MAN IN THE COUNTRY. 
An Argument for New England. 
On the first page of The R. N.-Y., dated 
November 2 , the editor replies to the query 
of a man who wishes to give lip city life, and 
with his capital of $2,000, make a home and. 
a living in the country. The querist thinks 
of buying Government land in the Far West, 
land under irrigation, either by Government 
or private enterprise, with the idea of making 
money by the increase in the value of the 
land. On the face of it, and with the prospect 
of making money only in view, this might 
possibly be a wise thing to do, if the man 
and his family are prepared to give up for 
years all social intercourse, never to go to a 
theatre or lecture, to be deprived of a church 
and school, to wade through endless mud 
when it rains, and equally endless dust when 
it is dry; to be miles from the nearest doctor 
or drug store; to have fresh meat to eat only 
when they kill it and dress it themselves; to 
look out from day to day on the same flat, 
monotonous prospect, until heart and mind 
are so sick and weary of it all that no amount 
of dollars won can compensate for all the 
things of which one is deprived. I cannot 
resist quoting from John Burroughs’ recent 
book, “Far and Near,” in which he describes 
the appearance of the country as he took his 
first trip beyond the Mississippi, and this was 
only three years ago. He says: “As a home¬ 
body and lover of the cosy and picturesque, 
I recoiled from the bald native farmhouses, 
with their unkempt surroundings, rude sheds 
and black, muddy barnyards. In New Eng¬ 
land one is surprised to see such inviting 
country homes amid a landscape so bleak and 
rugged. In the West his surprise is that the 
opulence of nature should be attended by such 
squalor and makeshift in the farm buildings 
and rural villages. The country roads stretch 
across the flat land like black bands of mud 
or dust, and as one’s eye grows wearied with 
the monotony, the thought comes to him, of 
what terrible homesickness the first settlers 
on these prairies must have suffered. In the 
more arid regions what pitiful farm homes— 
a low, one-room building made of hewn logs, 
plastered with mud, a flat roof, with a for- 
lorn-looking woman with children about her. 
standing in the doorway, a rude canopy of 
brush or cornstalks for shed and outbuild¬ 
ings; not a tree, not a shrub near; a few 
acres of green irrigated land not far off, but 
tlie hills around brown, bare, and forbid¬ 
ding. We saw hundreds of such homes and 
they affected me like a nightmare.” John 
Burroughs was one of a party of 40 profes¬ 
sors, authors and noted men to whom E. FI. 
Harriman gave a trip across the continent 
and up into Alaska; and he is too well known 
as an honest and accurate observer, for the 
truthfulness of his picture to be questioned. 
Let the man of middle age who thinks of go- 
; ng into the country, contrast the above with 
life in New England, with church and school 
everywhere, with cultivated society, with ac¬ 
cess to lecture and concert, with the doctor 
at the end of your telephone wire; with 
butchers’ cart and bakers’ wagon daily visi¬ 
tants; with instant markets for everything 
produced, every valley being the roadway of 
a stream that runs a factory, the occupants 
of which are your cash customers for what¬ 
ever is raised, No cyclone cellar necessary 
A JERSEY GIRL AND FIER DOGS. Fig. 420. 
ORCHARD THREE YEARS FROM WILDERNESS. Fig. 421. 
to escape with life from tornado, no necessity 
to depend on blocked railroad for fuel, or 
freeze. 
On the score of economy alone New Eng¬ 
land ought to win. This man’s $2,000 will 
buy a better farm here than anywhere else in 
the land. Prof. Henry, of Wisconsin, dean 
of the agricultural professors, leaves the 
West, where his life’s work has been done, 
and comes to Connecticut to buy a farm be 
cause land is so much cheaper here, markets 
nearer, and lie can buy a so much more beau- 
tifill home than the same money would buy 
elsewhere. And these cheap farms are not 
poor soil; the United States Year Book of 
Agriculture shows that Connecticut aver¬ 
ages 36 bushels of corn per acre, which is 
six to 10 bushels more than the great corn 
States of the West produce. This will be an 
astonishing statement to many people, but in¬ 
vestigation will show that it is true. And for 
dairying there could be no better location, for 
the way grass comes into this soil is simply 
marvelous. 
In front of my house is a two-acre lot, the 
north half used as a poultry yard. The south 
half raised barley two years and oats last 
year, the oats standing shoulder high. This 
year I sowed oats on a strip about 30 feet 
wide by 300 long, and put my little chick 
houses on it, expecting it to furnish green 
food for the chicks. I did not fertilize it at 
all, not wanting it to grow high, but it grew 
right away from the chicks, and averaged 2R> 
feet high, but when the grain filled out the 
chicks pulled it all down and “harvested” the 
grain. Next to the oats I planted a strip of 
field Corn about 50 bv 300 feet; this was to 
serve as shelter from hawks, shade, and later 
for them to pick at. South of the corn was a 
strip about 40 by 300 feet which I did not 
plow; grass had come into this so thickly that 
I left it as it was. My barns being full of 
hay, I gave the grass on this strip to a 
neighbor; he mowed and carted off two big 
loads of hay with an ox team, and this from 
land which was plowed and harrowed the 
year before, and sown to oats without any 
grass seed at all being sown. The route of 
the main road to the railroad station was 
changed three years ago. The old route is 
covered with green grass now, and is used as 
a pasture; this with nature’s seeding only. 
Dairying in such a country, with Boston, 
Providence, Hartford, Worcester, and hosts 
of small towns, calling for daily milk, is an 
industry that can hardly fail to afford a liv¬ 
ing. 
Why should a man go to the bare soil of 
the West, when here he can step into a house 
already built, with barns and shade trees, and 
abundance of fruit of all kinds, with the New 
York daily paper left at his door every day? 
There, something must be paid for the land; 
here, hundreds of farms can be bought for 
less than the value of the buildings, the land 
being virtually a free gift. This will not al¬ 
ways remain so; in fact, prices have already 
risen, real estate agents are advertising for 
farms to sell, and the Slav and the Scandi¬ 
navian are filling the registers of the district 
schools with strange names, for it is a fact 
that foreigners are becoming heirs to the land 
of the Pilgrims. A young man used to hard 
labor, and unused to the comforts and con¬ 
veniences of city life, could go West and 
rough it without any great sense of depriva* 
