1914. 
THE RURAL NEW -YORKER 
130 
NATIVE LIFE IN PANAMA. 
Conditions and Customs of the Canal Zone. 
I will try to jj;ive you an idea of Panama natives 
and their mode of farming, although I have never 
been back in the interior more than one or two miles, 
but have been across the Isthmus many times. The 
natives are very lazy and live a hand-to-mouth ex¬ 
istence. The way they raise corn is to burn the 
land over, cutting the trees down with a machete, 
which is a large knife about two feet long and three 
or four inches wide, make holes in the ground with 
a stick, drop in the seeds, and do no cultivating at 
all, save cutting the jungle grass with a machete. 
The jungle grass is very coarse, and grows six feet 
high. 
There are many kinds of fruits growing wild here, 
such as plantains, bananas, papayas, oranges, limes, 
alligator pears, cocoanuts, bread-fruit and pineap¬ 
ples. The natives have no horses at all. The way 
they go to market is to pack whatever they have in 
a basket that holds about two bushels and carry 
to the city of Panama on their backs, and one poor 
lone lien under their arm. Eggs are done up in 
corn husks, two in a bunch, and tied between, so 
the eggs do not strike together, but can be seen. 
Some feed their poultry grated 
cocoanuts: their grain is ground on a 
flat stone by another smaller stone in 
the hands to crush the grain, which is 
corn or rice. Up the coast and from 
the many islands in Panama Bay the 
natives bring their produce to the city 
in sail boats. In place of potatoes they 
raise several kinds of yams, roots and 
coarse sweet potatoes. Sugar cane is 
raised here to some extent, mostly to 
make rum. although the West Indians 
on the canal work buy it to eat raw. 
In the cities of Panama and Colon 
the Panaman merchants have the 
clothing and dry goods stores, banks, 
hardware, liquor stores-aiul hotels, and 
this class as a rule has a good educa¬ 
tion. The shops and grocery stores are 
run mostly by the Chinese. Spanish 
is spoken here by all the natives, but it 
is.claimed there are 72 different na¬ 
tionalities here, and some of them talk 
with their hands and feet as well as 
their mouth. 
Law and justice in Panama is very 
funny. If one is arrested for a crime 
they put him in prison and forget him 
for a year or two, then give him a 
trial, sentence him for the time he 
has been in, and give him his freedom. 
On the Canal Zone we have a tine 
police force mostly of Americans. 
Every American working on the canal 
or Panama railroad gets room fur¬ 
nished free with electric light, if 
single; if his family is with him he gets 
house, electric light, wood and coal 
free: house is furnished except linen 
and dishes. The ships will be passing 
through the canal soon. The great 
work is drawing to a close, and the 
forces are being reduced slowly but 
surely, but there will always be work 
here for skilled workmen. a. 
THE LARGE AND SMALL FARM. 
From time to time you print sketches 
that seem to boom the small places, and disparage 
the large farms, as if it was almost a crime to run 
a large farm. I take issue with that. I say let a 
man seek his own inclination; it depends on the 
man. Some men would not be suited to a large 
farm and others could not make a living off a small 
place. If a man wants to pay more for 10 acres of 
land, a small house and barn, and no timber, than he 
would for 100 acres of good land, tine large build¬ 
ings and a tine timber lot. enough fuel to last a 
lifetime, I am willing; that is the way the small 
farms generally sell. In speaking of the little farm 
costing as much as the large farm, I refer to an 
actual fact. A little place of 10 acres '2Vi miles 
from Cortland, sold for $3.S00. and a fine farm of 
100 acres live miles from Cortland, good buildings 
and timber, sold for $3,000. I could mention other 
instances. The man on the small place is handi¬ 
capped at every turn: he has no fuel or building 
and fencing material: he has so few acres he can 
afford to buy hardly any machinery. lie can of 
course raise truck crops; then they must be peddled 
out in small quantities, and I think most emphati¬ 
cally it is harder work to garden than it is to raise 
big fields of grain and potatoes on a large well- 
equipped farm. I had all tin* gardening I wanted 
when a boy; it was weed and thin and transplant, 
and every bit was back-breaking work. It had to 
be peddled from house to house, and all the sour 
looks I used to get. A trucker is no more welcome 
than an agent. If the trucker is so thrifty and 
diligent as to sell as much as some large farms, 
what of it? He paid as much for his little place; 
he hasn't any brag coming. Raising truck crops has 
been boomed so much I want to have my little say 
against it. 
If a young man is ambitious, likes machinery and 
would rather do things on a large scale, by all means 
don't discourage him. The work isn’t nearly as 
hard on a large farm, well equipped with big ma¬ 
chines, as on a small farm without implements. I 
know a young man who farms 21$ acres; not alone, 
hut he does the brunt of it alone, only hiring in 
sugaring a month and again in haying a month. 
The rest of it he does practically alone. lie cuts 
about 100 tons of hay and raises GO acres of grain 
alone. I mean he does the plowing and putting in 
crops alone, and crops are put in better than some 
of his neighbors’ who only have a small acreage. 
He is making good too, and does not hurt himself 
either. When he buys a machine it is the best, and 
takes a wide swath. Of course every man doesn't 
like machinery, and such ought not to handle it. but 
you don't want to talk small farm trucking and 
poultry to this man. We will take raising grain, 
for instance. My friend can either ride or walk on 
every tool he uses, from plowing till the grain is 
tossed from the self hinder, no hard work about it, 
and the big fields are an inspiration. 
In raising onions, beets or turnips it is all back¬ 
breaking. My back used to ache till I could see 
stars. I might say a good deal more in favor of the 
large farm. There is the timber lot to work in when 
you cannot farm, also the sugar bush and the big 
pasture for stock. There seems to be quite a 
tendency to find fault with the big farm, but I say 
it depends on the man; the kind of work lie likes 
is more than half. dayton l. piielps. 
New York. 
THE BACKBONE OF THE NATION. 
The cartoon shown at Fig. 55, that occupied a 
goodly position of the front page sheet of a daily 
paper, appealed mightily to my sense of humor, and 
furnished me food for a little serious reflection. 
Hasn't the American farmer a look of satisfied 
opulence? You would not imagine that a care or. 
a worry ever disturbed the serenity of his mind. 
Ilis occupation is the reaping of bountiful harvests. 
He simply sows the seed and sits down to wait 
while a benevolent Nature does the rest. No trouble¬ 
some stocks to bother him. Failing banks affect 
him not; there is no rush and hurry to catch the 
elevated or the commuter’s special. His life is one 
long dream of contentment and restful ease. 
I see nothing in the picture to suggest in any 
manner the toil of long days in the field and vicissi¬ 
tudes of weather and storm. No sign of the tense 
strain to get the seeding done ahead of the season, 
nor of the anxious watching and praying for the 
rains that come not. Nothing to remind one of the 
scanning of crop reports that record as vital a 
meaning to many a farmer as the stock ticker does 
to the city man. Lastly, can you distinguish any¬ 
thing in the picture that would suggest he was 
pocketing just 35 per cent, of the value of his most 
bountiful harvests? The ten billion, I imagine, rep¬ 
resents his 35 per cent. If so, there is just so much 
more that is rightfully his, for the other 30 per 
cent, ought to distribute his crop to consumer. 
The picture portrays just about what is usually 
handed to the public by the average daily paper. 
It pictures the farmer as the one class of society on 
easy street, painting with glowing colors a pleasant 
and picturesque life close to Mother 
Nature’s bosom; many times covering 
up or grossly misrepresenting facts, 
treating the farmer’s claims with ridi¬ 
cule and sarcasm. When the farmer 
tries to bring about legislation to 
rectify or ameliorate some abuse or 
open favoritism, the papers as the 
mouthpieces of big business and poli¬ 
tics. pat him kindly on the head and 
say. “Now you are a good chap and 
we are fond of you, but as to this mak¬ 
ing of laws, why you are a farmer and 
cannot expect to know much about it, 
and what is best for your interests and 
the country's. Trot along back to your 
seed time and harvest and we will at¬ 
tend to the running of this our glorious 
nation.” And in the past the farmer 
trotted happily back, such was his 
faith in his brothers, and such has 
been the custom of the tillers of the 
soil since the beginning of the ages. 
If we but look to our histories 
we will learn that in but few instances 
in the history of nations has the agri¬ 
cultural element had a voice to any 
great extent in the affairs of state. 
In the past and to a greater or less 
extent in the present in some countries, 
it is true that by reason of his isola¬ 
tion from the commercial and political 
••enters, he has been ill fitted to take 
an intelligent or perhaps we will say 
an effective part in political activities. 
For all the picture aroused my mirth, 
the title. "The Backbone of the Na¬ 
tion" is a great and glorious truth. It 
is the farmers who make all other 
kinds of prosperity possible. It is be-" 
cause we as a nation have produced a 
notions abundance of agricultural 
products that the accumulation of our 
nation’s wealth has been so phenome¬ 
nal. It was the farmer who was direct¬ 
ly responsible for the building of our 
many New England factory towns. By 
Ids energy and pioneering ability the 
farmer blazed the trail and demonstrated the possi¬ 
bilities in the different sections of the country, to be 
followed by our railways and other means of trans¬ 
portation. and by the development of other sources 
of wealth. 
Taking any of our big industries like the steel 
combination or our railroad systems, they are de¬ 
pendent for the greater part directly upon the 
fhrmer. With all of these facts so evident that any 
one can see them, if he hut investigates a bit, is it 
not a shame that the farmer has to crawl and beg 
for, as privileges, what really are his rights? What 
is the reason for this state of affairs? It is because 
he does not realize strength and power as a class. 
He does not understand that all agricultural inter¬ 
ests are related, and should each help the other. 
You see I am a farmer, and believe in the natural 
strength of those of my class. In times of national 
stress and adversity it has been the farmer who has 
sturdily taken his stand by what he believed to be 
right. It is the farming population that has been 
the regulating governor by which the machinery of 
state has been in many cases kept from running 
wild and by being what he has been, and is, can 
rightfully be called “The Backbone of the Nation.” 
Vermont. lee f, hatch. 
