THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 14, 
r 410 
Hope Farm Notes 
“What does the Hope Farm man think 
of this conservative father and progress¬ 
ive son discussion?” 
I do not know whether I would rank 
as a “conservative father” or not. What 
do you mean by “conservative”? Few 
words have been so abused in promoting 
a convenient meaning. It has been used 
to describe one who tries to conserve or 
save property or rights. At the other 
extreme, when people want to describe a 
“skinflint”—a narrow, hard, mean “stand- 
pat” character, they call him “conserva¬ 
tive” because he has lost the power to 
grow. Benjamin Disraeli said this about 
a political party: “A conservative gov¬ 
ernment is an organized hypocrisy.” lie 
had it about right, for such a govern¬ 
ment in a nation or tlm head of a fam¬ 
ily may be ranked with a moral dead 
man—without growth or ideals—stand¬ 
ing still in the grayeyard of the past, 
while everything else that is worth while 
is moving on. I would rather be a 
“conservative” who saves rather than 
one who scolds. 
As answer to the question I want to 
give a brief sketch of what seems to me 
the ideal relations between the two farm 
characters you name. There has recent¬ 
ly been published a book, entitled “From 
the Letter Files of S. W. Johnson,” by 
his daughter, Elizabeth A. Opborne. In 
this book, chiefly between the lines, I can 
read the story of about the finest “con¬ 
servative father” that an American farm 
has yet produced. I shall tell more of 
Prof. S. W. Johnson’s work later. He 
may be called, without question, as Mrs. 
Osborne says, “one of that small group 
of great men of genius who are known 
as ‘father of their particular field’.” 
Prof. Johnson was clearly the father 
of experiment station work in America. 
He brought from Germany and Europe 
the knowledge of scientific agriculture, 
which these foreign nations had been 
forced to develop, and planted it here 
at a time when there was little demand 
or even interest in the subject. 
I think it a somewhat unfortunate 
circumstance that in most histories peo¬ 
ple are satisfied to rest with the “father” 
of an event or institution. This does 
not satisfy me, nor will it satisfy our 
farmers, and I wish to show that one 
of their own class, a plain New York 
farmer, may rightly be considered the 
grandfather of American agricultural 
science. Abner A. Johnson may be 
called one of the original “back-to-the- 
landers.” In 1834 he gave up his busi¬ 
ness in town and bought farm lands in 
Lewis County, N. Y. Here he became 
a farmer. Our “back-to-the-land” friends 
may claim that his early business train¬ 
ing gave him the vision and patience 
which were later to enable him to play 
the part of “grandfather.” 
As a boy Prof. S. W. Johnson was 
l Bmall and delicate, with defective eyes. 
As his daughter says, these eyes “gave 
him little information about objects 
more than a few feet away.” This boy 
read every book he could find. We have 
oil made mental pictures of Abraham 
Lincoln scouring the country for books 
and reading them over and over at every 
spare moment. Here it was again in 
the case of Prof. Johnson—the reading 
habit—one of the most blessed things 
which a country boy can acquire. His 
daughter tells us that this “indifference 
to matters outside of books was the de¬ 
spair of his family.” This is entirely 
true to human nature, for who has not 
seen cases where some child seems to be 
horn with a book in his hand, and with 
a mind which craves reading as his stom¬ 
ach craves food? I have known cases 
where such children were whipped or 
given harder work to “cure” them of 
the privilege or genius which God sent 
into the world with them. I have known 
the books they loved to be hidden, and 
dull, useless volumes put in their hands 
to break up the habit, just as the old 
housewives put aloes and pepper on the 
chihl’s thumb to break the habit of suck¬ 
ing it. 
We may all be thankful that there was 
nothing of this in the Johnson family. 
Abner Johnson could not understand the 
untried land into which this reading and 
study would lead. A plain farmer, liv¬ 
ing on the frontier, he could think of 
pnly three safe and profitable things for 
a man to engage in—law, medicine and 
farming. These three, and the ministry, 
were all he could comprehend as possi¬ 
bilities in which to find opportunity for 
education. If farmers of to-day, with 
all the knowledge of what science has 
done for farming, take a “conservative” 
view of education, what must we think 
of Abner Johnson, at a time when mil¬ 
lions of acres of rich new land were so 
cheap that they could not be given 
away? With all this in mind we are 
lost in admiration for the broadminded¬ 
ness and clear vision which prompted 
Abner Johnson to have faith in his boy, 
and to support him in what must have 
seemed the wildest of “progressive” ideas. 
Nor shall the “grandfather” have all 
the praise, for the “aunt” and the 
“grandmother” must be remembered. In 
looking back over his life every self- 
made man must gratefully remember how 
mother and sister were true and loyal 
to him—quicker than the others to see 
where his ideals led. Prof. Johnson’s 
elder sister saw what he needed, as many 
another sister has comprehended, and her 
love and sympathy sustained him. Then 
there was the invalid mother who helped. 
In 1848 Abner Johnson gave his boy a 
building for a farm laboratory and $50 
with which to buy chemicals. The 
mother gave him her wedding spoons, 
“old and thin and dented by the hard 
usage of many children.” These were to 
be melted up to be used as chemical re¬ 
agents for laboratory work. I like to 
mention these details, because they show 
the real, vital power of what I may call 
the true “conservative” family These 
plain farming people believed in their 
boy. They knew he was true, and while 
they could not see into the future as he 
did, they meant that he should carry 
with him the best they had to give—not 
only money, but that greater thing, faith 
and confidence in him. As you read this 
you will be able to tell me of a dozen 
casns where, in farm homes, mother as 
well as father and the girls have given 
up the best they had in order that John 
or Henry might have a chance. 
While Abner Johnson provided this 
laboratory for his own sou, he could not 
believe that chemistry could provide a 
profitable life work. I imagine he re¬ 
garded chemistry as a sort of play or 
mental exercise—not grasping the im¬ 
portance of getting down to fundamental 
principles. This is probably the chief 
reason for the differences between most 
conservative fathers and their educated 
sons. The older man has made his suc¬ 
cess through plain common-sense and 
shrewd observation of surface indica¬ 
tion. The boy has been taught to get 
down under the surface and dig out the 
fundamental principles. He does not 
know how to apply them yet, while 
father does not understand the funda¬ 
mentals, but does know how to apply 
such facts as he has learned. The older 
man’s standard of success is profitable 
application, which the boy has not 
learned. Abner Johnson could not con¬ 
ceive of the profitable application of 
chemistry to farming, therefore he want¬ 
ed his boy to become a lawyer or a doc¬ 
tor. That has ever been the trouble 
about farming—too many men have as¬ 
sumed that one must go into one of the 
so-called professions, or into manufactur¬ 
ing, in order to find opportunity for the 
best thought and brain development. 
Prof. Johnson became a teacher and 
finally a chemist at Yale College. The 
more he studied the more he saw the 
need of thorough training before he 
could give his students, and in a larger 
way his countrymen, what he clearly saw 
they needed. So he told his father of 
his desire to go to Europe and spend 
some years in study with the great 
chemists in Germany ; and the boy asked 
the father to lend him the needed money. 
Here was the true, biting test for your 
“conservative” father. Abner Johnson 
could not, from his own experience or 
training, see the need of this expensive 
European study. How could he realize 
what the future had in store for agricul¬ 
tural science? Yet, somehow, he had gained 
through watching his boy something of 
the young man’s faith and enthusiasm. 
The fact is that Abner Johnson believed 
in his oivn boy. As the other sons came 
of age Abner Johnson gave each of them 
a farm—out of his tract of northern land. 
He now gave an amount of money equal 
to the value of such a farm to Samuel. 
Thus while the other boys received their 
value in land, Samuel received his share 
in education! When we consider that 
Abner Johnson knew the value of land, 
but speculated in education on the sole 
security of faith in his own boy, you will 
agree with me that this wise and kindly 
man may well be called the grandfather 
of experiment station work. 
Later I hope to tell you something of 
what Prof. Samuel Johnson did with 
his education—how it spread and de¬ 
veloped through American agriculture— 
like leaven through the lump. What I 
write to-day is to try to make some of 
these conservative fathers think kindly 
of their progressive sons. The boy often 
wants to do things which seem foolish 
to the old man. Abner Johnson must 
have thought the same thing. But he 
had faith in his boy, and banked on that 
faith. Have you the same faith in your 
boy? If not, why not? He is your boy, 
and it may be a sort of reflection upon 
you if you cannot back him up in worthy 
enterprises. Right in this connection, if 
you have a chance, read the “Introduc¬ 
tion” to Joe Wing’s book on “Alfalfa 
Farming in America.” There you have 
the “conservative father and progressive 
son” again. 
And, by the way, before we leave the 
subject here is another type of the 
“conservative father.” 
The I ope Farm Notes on the subject 
of “Sleep” prompt me to suggest that 
there are other causes than insomnia 
that interfere with sleep. All five of 
our children lirve whooping cough, and 
we find that it not only seriously breaks 
up the quiet hours of the night, but also 
disturbs in other ways the customary 
regime of domestic life. C. X.. M. 
We know all about this from experi¬ 
ence. When the small son is progress¬ 
ing with whooping cough it is a wise 
father who gets up to conserve his wife’s 
health and sleep. That would have been 
a good job for my weary friend. 
H. W. C. 
Winter Vetch Sown in Spring. 
If Winter vetch is sown in the Spring, 
will it make a crop of seed this season? 
If it will, how would it do to sow oats 
with it for support? G. B. S. 
Keesville, N. Y. 
No, you will not be satisfied to sow 
Winter vetch in the Spring. The Spring 
vetch will do better, but we think Can¬ 
ada field peas with the oats will give a 
more satisfactory crop. 
Spring Rains 
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