©44 
U'HhC RURAI> NEW-VORKER 
May 20. 
Hope Farm Notes 
Burdex of Money.—O ne of the strongest 
and truest popular cartoons that I ever saw 
is the following taken from the New York 
World: 
With a few rapid scratches the artist has 
made clear one of the most sorrowful bur¬ 
dens that men carry or that the world 
imist stand by and witness. This boy, 
loaded down with the curse of $60,000,000, 
must go through life deprived of the 
glorious things which free men enjoy. Until 
he is put into his coffin young Astor will 
be the slave of that bag of gold, and there 
never was a more cruel master. A young 
man of the same age with nothing on earth 
except health and brains and hope is a 
prince by the side of this poor slave. If he 
can only carry a burden in the shape of 
an obligation to provide ‘for or help sup¬ 
port some dependent one, he will have the 
moral ballast to keep him true to his 
course. 
When the Titanic gave her last gasp and 
settled down into the ocean, she carried 
pauper and prince alike. All were tho 
same in the eyes of death. In one record 
I find that a rich man rushed back to his 
stateroom to bring out a box of money and 
a case of rare jewels. The ship gave a 
lurch to one side and he heard the rush of 
the water—and left the valuables and 
brought back three oranges for children of 
the steerage. How poor and paltry money 
did seem at such a time. Ten per cent 
of its value in cork sawdust was worth far 
more. Among those who went down with 
the ship was John Jacob Astor—a great 
grandson of John Jacob Astor (or Aslidoer), 
a German butcher boy who came to this 
country about 130 years ago with “one 
Sunday suit, seven flutes and five pounds 
in money.” lie started peddling cakes, 
then furs and incidentally rum and Indian 
supplies, and died in 1848 worth $20,000,- 
000. I need not tell here how this money 
was accumulated. The story would include 
nearly every form of graft, indirect rob¬ 
bery, special privileges and grasping advan¬ 
tage. Ilis sons and grandsons simply held 
on to this money and real estate and let 
the public pay them tribute. When the 
Titanic sunk the collective Astor fortune 
amounted to more than $450,000,000— 
nearly all of it the result of increase of 
land values and consequently heavy rents. 
Astor’s share was about $100,000,000. 
Could he have taken it all with him into 
the sea his boy would have been far better 
off, and would have grown up a free man. 
Under our laws the burden of this lump of 
gold passes on to his son. God seems to 
have packed the crude gold away in in¬ 
accessible places. Men must fight and en¬ 
dure and give health or life before it can 
l>e taken out of the pockets which Nature 
has fenced in with her worst barbed wire. 
And when a man must carry a lump of 
gold which he has not earned the real gold 
of his character is hidden beneath and be¬ 
hind it—out of reach and dead. What 
possible chance can this untrained and un¬ 
worked boy have to do real things in the 
world? It seems to me that he is doomed 
to walk through life in a shadow. Food, 
drink, clothing and shelter-—he can have 
no more—and the boy working through col¬ 
lege on bread and cheese and hope will be 
10 times the happy man. Who can be 
happy with a bag of gold grown to his 
back? 
Give it away? IIow? The wealth is no 
doubt entailed so that it could not be taken 
apart. It must grow and grow and grow, 
sucking the rights and earnings of others 
with its legal privileges until it shadows 
the world. And even if he were free to 
do so—how could this young man give it 
away wisely and helpfully? What does he 
know about the need of money? How can 
he tell where to put a dollar so that it will 
relieve and help true ambition rather than 
poison it? That is the secret of giving. 
It is the great vision or look into eternal 
life which seems to be denied the rich man 
farmer? It makes me feel very bad to see 
my father full of hard cider all the time. 
Do you know of any way that I could get 
him to stop drinking it? He makes it so 
unpleasant for us all. Do you think it 
will injure his health if he keeps on drink¬ 
ing it? Please say all the mean things about 
hopelessly tied to a lump of inherited gold. 
Nearly 20 centuries ago a rich man came 
by night (probably afraid to come in day¬ 
light) asking this great question of life. He 
was told to sell everything he had and 
giyo it to the poor. Probably one reason 
why he could not do it was that he did 
not know how. Thus it seems to me that 
young Astor with his $60,000,000 of bor¬ 
rowed money is one of the most helpless 
and hopeless of men. “Borrowed money?" 
Yes, the Astor fortune is peculiar in the 
fact that it represents public donations. 
You take an old cow pasture worth about 
$10 an acre, have the city grade it and run 
streets through it at public expense. Then 
you hang onto it, paying nominal taxes 
until it is worth $10,000 or more per front 
foot, and where has your value come from? 
Who has paid for it and filled your pockets 
except the people who have crowded in and 
around the old pasture? You have bor¬ 
rowed their money. The law compelled 
them to lend it to you, and they cannot 
get it back. 
That rich young man of 20 centuries ago 
failed. Had he given away his money he 
would have become one of the greatest char¬ 
acters in history. He failed—the money 
had grown to him and # he did not know 
how to give it up. Suppose this young Astor 
knew how to give away his bag of gold so 
it could go back honestly and fairly to the 
class from which it really came! Through 
coming centuries he would rank as the great 
man of this age. Could he but find a fair 
plan for the redistribution of this fortune— 
the relief and help without the poison, and 
all the other great masters of wealth would 
be forced to follow him. They would then 
be the true ruling force in the world. As 
it is even a blind man can see that an un¬ 
controllable power is growing which will 
fake their leadership and their unjust con¬ 
trol of money away from them. I pity 
young Astor because from his easy life and 
gold-plated future he cannot give away his 
bag of gold or become more than a byword 
and a sneer in history. Of course I realize 
that many a young man who reads this will 
not agree. They must sweat and toil and 
dig and deny. A very small slice of this 
Astor gold would suit them well. I felt 
the same way 30 years ago. I never saw 
a man who enjoyed doing the things which 
put real character into him. I do not 
try to convince young men—no one could 
convince me except hard necessity and long 
experience. You may take it from me, 
however, that the worst thing father can 
do to the boy is to make childhood an 
easy play and then put a bunch of money 
on his untried back. This country has 
been money drunk for the past In years. 
The most dangerous heritage to the next 
generation is the effort which many pool 
men make to dress their families and live 
in a desperate imitation of their rich friends 
and neighbors. I wish I could make every 
young man realize that young Astor with 
his crushing lump of gold is shut away 
by a cruel fate from the best things which 
life can offer. Right at this time when 
Mr. Roosevelt is stirring the thought of 
the nation, many young men are asking— 
what can I do for my country? You can¬ 
not do anything more useful than to realize 
that unhappy rich men like young Astor 
have been cut out of all chance for a 
“square deal” with themselves. There is 
no better time than right now to read 
James Russell Lowell’s poem “The Her¬ 
itage.” Here are two verses: 
“O rich man’s son ! there is a toil 
That with all others level stands. 
Large charity doth never soil, 
But only whitens soft, white hands. 
This is the best crop from thy lands 
A heritage it seems to me 
Worth being rich to hold in fee. 
“O poor man’s son! Scorn not thy state; 
There is worse weariness than thine 
In merely being rich and great. 
Toil only gives the soul to shine 
And makes rest fragrant and benign. 
A heritage, it sems to me 
Worth being poor to hold in fee. 
Still Another Burden. —Now here if? 
another young man about the age of young 
Astor. Let us consider his burden: 
“Do you think cider either old or new, 
a good drink to have on your table all the 
time? My father and brother use it all 
the time; they have drunk two barrels 
since last October, a large pitcher full all 
the time and at every meal. My father is 
very cross and I cannot please him. My 
sister thinks it is the cider, as he is cranky 
all the time. He never used to drink any 
until he came on this farm. We all work 
very hard to make the farm pay. I have 
never asked for any pay. Would you ad¬ 
vise me to stay on the farm and put up 
with it or go to work with some other 
cider drinking." 
That letter is genuine. I could not 
say any meaner things about hard cider 
than anyone can read between the lines of 
this letter! Here is a good man slowly 
drowning the best there is In him in a 
barrel of hard cider. Can you think of 
anything more pitiful than that? “A cider 
drunk’.’ is worse than anything that a man 
can get out of beer or whisky, mere is 
something about the stuff that turns a 
man nearer to a brute than anything else 
I know of. I would just as soon put a 
little arsenic into our drinking water as to 
have a pitcher of cider on tap. I think 
some of the houses where hard cider is 
kept on hand 'and where country boys go 
and drink are worse than saloons. This 
is because the saloon is not respectable, 
while the farmhouse is, yet the respect¬ 
able hard cider may be worse than the dis¬ 
reputable beer. Put me down anywhere 
and anyway as opposed to hard cider. If 
this man does not stop drinking, with the 
effect the cider now has it will surely get 
him. His eyes will grow dim and blear. 
His nose will get red. Ugly little red veins 
will start out all over his face, and hateful 
little cider pimples will appear. His 
breath will gi-ow short and his heart will 
beat like a trip hammer when he climbs a 
hill. It is all in the cider barrel—the little 
imps which will paint his face, steal his 
breath and pound on his heart and tap the 
very soul in him. 
“Yes, his mouth is very small, 
Not three inches wide in all, 
But it holds one hundred acres of the finest 
farming land. 
Yes. it floated like a boat, 
For it all went down his throat. 
At the crooking of his elbow and the raising 
of his hand." h. w. c. 
Frightening Crows. —I saw a recent 
note on how to catch crows. I never kill 
a crow, never lose by them any corn or 
chickens. The crow is the farmer’s best 
friend. Tie a bunch of hen feathers, swing 
them from a long pole, take pieces of win- | 
dow glass the same way it will swing most 
of the time, scatter a few more bunches 
tied so the wind won't scatter them 
around in different parts of the field. If 
you have any looking glass that is good j 
try it and let us know how the crows 
like it. A. N. BROWN. 
Massachusetts. 
Maine Live "Stock. —A few days ago a 
“Wild West show” buyer came here and 
bought a yoke of fancy ox-en. The farmer j 
who sold the oxen makes a business, with i 
his neighbors’ help, of raising blue ribbon I 
cattle. Every Fall they visit the various 
fairs in the State, aud always bring home 
a bunch of blue ribbons. We had a horse 
company, too, a double-header. The smooth 
man sold a French coach and a big black 
stock horse in one Summer, but to two 
companies. Haven’t heard of any dividends 
being paid yet. , L. w. r. 
Farmington, Me. 
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D “■ 
pc 
xh 
You actually put dollars in y 
h 
ocketwhen _ 
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our 
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U.S.A. 
