THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 12, 1913. 
80ti 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
“That we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not hare died in vain—that 
this nation, under God. shall have a new 
birth of freedom and that government of 
the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth.” 
A youug man, with a clear strong 
voice, had just finished reciting Lincoln’s 
speech at Gettysburg. The gray-haired 
commander of the G. A. R. had brought 
the Hope Farm man up by the flag pole 
right under the big flag—and intro¬ 
duced him as the speaker. Standing 
there in the hush of that great crowd I 
never before realized how inadequate 
words can be to express the life prob¬ 
lem of half a century. 
It was in the cemetery at Plymouth, 
Mass., on Memorial Day. New England 
was at her glorious best. There was not 
a cloud in the sky—the last apple bloom 
was just ending. There had been rain 
enough to fill the sandy soil and bright¬ 
en Nature’s bridal dress of green. An 
east wind blew in from the sea, straight¬ 
ening out the flags and carrying just 
enough of a biting tongue to tell us Win¬ 
ter had simply journeyed up the coast 
for awhile. All over the cemetery little 
flags sparkled in the sun at hundreds of 
graves, and flowers were everywhere. 
Memorial Day in New England still car¬ 
ries much of its true significance. Some 
of you have seen the day fall into a per¬ 
functory observation of decorating sol¬ 
diers’ graves—and then a day of 
sport. I wish you could have seen the 
audience drawn up in a square around 
the G. A. R. lot in the Plymouth ceme¬ 
tery. It would have stirred you down to 
your lowest levels. There was the mili¬ 
tary company, the Boy Scouts, “promin¬ 
ent citizens” and others in the front 
ranks. Off at one side close to the flag 
pole and under a tree stood a group of 
old veterans. Some of them marched in 
the parade, others were too feeble to 
march. There they stood, the last of the 
brave Old Guard. Back of them, outside 
the hollow square which the paraders 
had formed, stood a great throng of peo¬ 
ple. There were gray-haired men and 
women who had walked with memories 
to the cemetery. As I stood there it 
seemed to me that I could see standing 
beside them the ghosts of father, husband, 
son, brother or lover, whose strong young 
life had been given to his country. Then 
there were young, hopeful, shining faces, 
sobered for the moment, as if they looked 
beyond the bright pleasure path of youth 
into something of the real meaning of 
life. It was a hard place to be in. That 
little group of blue-clad veterans con¬ 
tained the last small handful of my 
father’s old company. Here I was back 
in the old home town, with old memor¬ 
ies beating at the brain with hammers 
to demand admittance. What could you 
say—what could any man say at such 
a time that could tell the story which 
half a century had been working out? 
Well, the Hope Farm man said, among 
other things, something like the follow¬ 
ing : 
“I cannot realize that more than half 
a century ago my father and his two 
brothers left this pleasant town of Ply¬ 
mouth, and all that they thought worth 
while, to fight for their country. They 
were plain men of the common people, 
workmen, who when they .heard Lincoln’s 
call threw down their tools and ran bare¬ 
handed to the flag. I have heard men 
argue that people like these working men 
had no business to volunter. Their 
death meant not only a strong man taken 
out of productive labor, but a woman 
broken at heart, and a family of children 
left to grow up through life without that 
God-given right of every child, a care-free 
childhood. Yet these men left their 
homes because they could not help it, be¬ 
cause they were drawn by a mighty force, 
greater even than that which tied mem to 
this old town. It seems impossible to¬ 
day that the boy of those old war times 
can now look back over half a century 
and try to grasp the meaning of it all. 
“What a half century it has been, 
packed full of glorious achievements, of 
progress and power! It has brought 
mighty problems to our country, and the 
greatest one of all falls to our young 
people. The question which these men 
fought and died for was mighty, yet it 
was simple. The politicians who stood 
back of the war and pulled the strings 
had other motives, but the plain men 
whose graves you cover today went right 
to the heart of the subject. They knew 
that human beings were held in open and 
undisguised slavery, and that was all 
they grasped of this great problem. The 
problems of today are more complicated, 
because the chief dangers ahead of us are 
invisible, and do not appeal to the spirit 
which sent these men from their homes 
willingly to die. 
“The future of this great Republic de¬ 
pends not upon your millionaires, your 
colleges and your factories, but upon 
your young people. It is not what they 
may earn or save, but whether they can 
realize in heart and soul the enduring 
spirit of sacrifice which these plain work¬ 
ing men carried with them to the grave. 
Give me five hundred poor young men of 
the fine old stock. Let them be thirty 
years old or under, with youth’s ideal 
fresh, and who in the strength of their 
hopeful manhood can realize what life 
has really meant to these veterans. Give 
me these five hundred men, and I will do 
more to change the future history of 
New England in a strong and hopeful 
way than any five thousand millionaires 
your section can show. That will be be¬ 
cause with my five hundred poor young 
men I will make history which is based 
upon God-fearing ideals, which have not 
been consumed in the idolatry of a dol¬ 
lar. 
“What a life these elderly men have 
lived! They have been able to keep alive 
something of the eternal glory of youth. 
Some of them died in the bloom of their 
youth. It seemed hard to die when life 
was full and strong, and yet those who 
dropped by the wayside never lived to 
know the sorrow and pain, and the trou¬ 
ble which came with advancing years. 
Perhaps it was better for them to pass 
on as they did, long before they could 
ever taste the dregs which lie in the wine 
of life. Some have lived on and on to 
meet the cares of age, yet all of you 
perhaps without knowing it have tasted 
the great joy with which our country re¬ 
wards those who live up to the supreme 
test. 
“What is this supreme test? At some 
time in your life and mine God and coun¬ 
try call every man and woman up to 
the judgment seat and say: ‘ Give me 
your life. In your young manhood you 
had ideals of life and character. We 
now demand your life for service as a 
test of these ideals.’ Every man must 
face this, not alone upon the battlefield, 
but in all the humble, peaceful walks 
of life—the farm, the factory, the shop, 
wherever man and woman may work out 
the-burden of labor which falls to them. 
Your country demands of you a life in 
some way consecrated to service, and 
these veterans answered the call and gave 
all that they had willingly, lovingly, in 
order that their country might live. They 
gave the full measure of their lives in 
order that you young people, who cannot 
realize what war meant, might face as 
you now do the most glorious opportunity 
this world has ever offered. And these 
men here today, looking back across the 
bridge of fifty years through the sac¬ 
rifice they made, feel in their hearts a 
glorious reward, which you with your un¬ 
tested lives cannot understand. So, 
standing here in the sun in this old town, 
with all it means to me, I would rather 
know today that my father, a plain work¬ 
ing man, gave his life to his country and 
answered her call, rather than to have 
had him live on. out of danger, with no 
spirit of sacrifice in his heart, to have 
become a millionaire. 
“And think for a moment what these 
men have done for you and me. They 
gave us freedom of thought and hand. 
The continuation of slavery would have 
meant the ruin of New England. She 
would have felt it more than any other 
corner of the country. In material things 
the master commands the slave, but in 
moral and spiritual things the slave 
dominates the master, and drags him 
down to the lower levels. If the New 
England conscience had not been able to 
free the slaves, New England would have 
come out of the struggle without a con¬ 
science and without moral pride. What 
these men fought for has been made en¬ 
during by their sacrifice. The coming 
generation may forget it. or fail to know 
what it means, but these little flags 
sparkling on this hillside stand for the 
old New England spirit, tested and tried 
by blood and fire, and God will not let 
it die. 
“It seemed at one time as if New Eng¬ 
land would lose her population and her 
place. After the war there was a rush 
from the Eastern States to the richer 
Western land. Men and women went 
West for what they thought better oppor¬ 
tunity, and your capital followed them. 
You who have stayed in this corner of 
New England all your lives cannot fully 
estimate how men and money from this 
section have influenced Western develop¬ 
ment. Had it not been for the soldiers 
who after the war left the Eastern 
States to settle on the prairies, great 
sections of the richest land in this coun¬ 
try would hardly have been American¬ 
ized ; but for the money made in New 
England and sent West for investment, 
great tracts of land throughout the West 
would still be little better than a wilder¬ 
ness. For these men, trained in the 
army and in the town meeting, and their 
wives and daughters, trained as teachers 
in your public schools, organized the 
mixed population of that great territory, 
transplanted the Eastern spirit, and led 
in development. The Indian and the 
buffalo were driven out not so much by 
the hunter’s rifle, as by the man and 
the dollar from New England. And now 
the tide is turning back. The very sac¬ 
rifice of half a century ago now makes 
New England’s opportunity greater. Your 
waste land will be taken up and improved, 
your water powers will be utilized, the 
force of the ocean wave hammering at 
your coast will some day be utilized and 
wired back and distributed into every 
hamlet and corner of New England. The 
war and the Panama Canal will so 
change conditions and bring back our 
seaport trade, that the strip of land 150 
miles wide along the upper Atlantic will 
dominate the world in thought and pow¬ 
er. But for the war and the canal this 
power would have been shifted to the 
Mississippi Valley, but events have made 
it so that the child here today stands 
face to face with the most wonderful pos¬ 
sibilities that the world has ever known. 
When I compare the opportunities which 
opened before me as a boy, and those be¬ 
fore my boys today, the glory and the no¬ 
bility of the half century which these sol¬ 
diers gathered here today have given us, 
becomes overpowering. For had New 
England failed in her sacrifice, had these 
lives been offered in vain, had she been 
obliged to employ hireling soldiers rather 
than these plain working volunteers, your 
children and your children’s children 
would have carried the curse through 
their lives.” h. w. c. 
Training Farm Labor. 
On page OoO was an article signed “Ac¬ 
countant,” on “Training Farm Boys For 
Actual City Work.” “Accountant” was 
right in some respects. Corporations 
and business houses do train young men 
or old ones for that matter. The training 
of course is done for a purpose, not to 
aid the clerks so much as to benefit the 
company he is working for. Most corpor¬ 
ations and business firms have their own 
way of doing things. Very few do them 
alike. The same line of business will 
often have entirely different methods in 
conducting their work, from their com¬ 
petitors. Opinion of the management, of 
course, regulates the methods to be em¬ 
ployed. Therefore, whether an experi¬ 
enced clerk or recruit just out of busi¬ 
ness college, when he first enters an es¬ 
tablishment as an employee, he accepts 
their set rate of wages or salary and office 
hours, and must always be “broke” to 
their way of doing things. While the new 
man or recruit is being trained in the way 
of his new employment, who does the 
work, that the new man is unable to do, 
and who generally breaks him in? It is 
not the accountant. It is not the man¬ 
agement. I should say not. It is the 
other experienced man. He spends his 
time teaching the new man, and then he 
must put on extra speed, longer hours, to 
catch up his own work, and finish that 
left undone by the new man. In other 
words, the old or longer employed clerk, 
must shoulder the responsibility, do the 
training, have the care, the longer hours, 
and greater burden of work, to break in 
these new men. and not the corporation 
or business house. 
I have spent about 17 years working in 
various lines of business, and can give 
some facts and figures relative to what 
big firms are doing for their employees. 
Our accountant friend’s friend must have 
got in right, too. Few corporations or 
companies start new or inexperienced 
clerks at $50 a month salary. I am 
afraid our accountant has had little ex¬ 
perience himself in getting around among 
our over-generous corporations, or else he 
would be better versed on the salary ques¬ 
tion. Then as an accountant he fully 
knows that most corporations, manufac¬ 
turing concerns or business houses, figure 
their cost, and then make their selling 
price. Their profit must come from the 
selling price. Cost of material, cost of 
factory expenses (if any), cost of admin¬ 
istration or overhead expenses (in this 
latter expense we put our new clerk's 
salary) and the whole expense equals the 
selling price plus the company’s profit. 
The farmer cannot meet the above con¬ 
ditions. lie must contend with the 
weather, and markets, over which he has 
absolutely no control. He must sell his 
goods at the price fixed by others. Most 
of his goods are of a perishable nature. 
He cannot place them in stock, or store 
them away for any considerable time. He 
Cannot hold them to stop and figure in 
cost of material, cost of production, cost 
of marketing, and then add profit. lie 
must take what he is offered. That is all. 
There can be little comparison between 
farmer and business man in this respect. 
The laws and principles applied to a bus¬ 
iness concern in the city, cannot be ap¬ 
plied in its entirety to our farmer. I am 
afraid our accountant friend wrote his 
article without much thought, and as an 
accountant he must know that in making 
comparisons with the city business man 
and the farmer, even the system of book¬ 
keeping, as applied to most business con¬ 
cerns in our cities, could not be used to 
conduct a system of accounting for our 
farms, and practically the same elements 
enter, relative to the hiring of recruits. 
New York. joiin t. hill. 
Inactive Soil. 
This Spring I took down a poultry 
house and planted dwarf apples and pears 
with strawberries between in the chicken 
yard. On the spot where the house stood 
the berries turned brown on edges of 
leaves and died. House stood here four 
years, but earth floor was dust dry, so I 
thought would not be saturated with the 
droppings. What can I do to remedy 
this condition? Will the trees be affect¬ 
ed? Is it too late to move them if care¬ 
fully done? t. c. L 
Belleville, N. J. 
Soil from which the sunlight, air and 
water have been long excluded, as when 
confined under or in buildings, etc., be¬ 
comes dormant as it were, the fertilizing 
constituents contained therein undergo a 
change from active to that of inactive and 
so remain to a certain extent, until re¬ 
vived by the action of sunlight, air and 
water, without which life in any form 
cannot exist. This applies to the invisi¬ 
ble life in the soil as well as to the visi¬ 
ble life in the things it produces. It may 
be quite possible that the soil contains too 
much chicken manure for strawberries, 
but the trouble is most likely due to the 
inactive condition of the soil. The fruit 
trees are not likely to suffer much, ex¬ 
cept that the growth may be somewhat 
restricted this year. The soil will be 
steadily improving under the influence of 
nature’s great restoratives, and will be 
rehabilitated with full life and energy by 
the opening of another season. k. 
Rattlesnakes in the Hudson Valley. 
I have never seen any articles in “our 
paper” discussing snakes. I know there 
are good and bad species. Along the Hud¬ 
son River (both sides) we have the cop¬ 
perhead. a very venomous snake, and on 
the east side of the Hudson there are 
some rattlers. I wonder whether any of 
our readers know of any way of exter¬ 
minating these poisonous snakes, particu- 
larly the copperhead, which is the most 
dangerous because it approaches buildings 
and cleared land, while the rattler keeps 
in the wild. My farm on the Hudson is 
known to be quite a place for copper¬ 
heads and I would like to exterminate 
them if possible. J. T. 
R. N.-Y.—Let us hear from some of our 
Hudson Valley readers about these 
snakes. 
“Men are always late. I have waited 
here since 6 o’clock for my husband to 
come, and it is now 7:30.” “At what 
hour were you to meet him?” asked the 
woman who had joined her. “At 5 
o’clock.”—Buffalo Courier. 
