Tb* RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
83 
Some Problems of New England Agriculture 
Farming in the Northeast Corner of the Country 
A STRATEGIC CENTER.—If New England even 
approached the topography of, say Iowa, it 
would today be a second Holland. The whole de¬ 
velopment of America lias been on lines that take a 
beginning in Europe, and many of the lines that 
have linked us to Europe in the past have straight¬ 
ened to or through New England. It is one section 
of the country with a strategic location. From the 
days of the Mayflower things have revolved more 
or less about this corner of America. Fifty years 
ago New England was certainly Tt. She had the 
manufacturing plants, controlled the business, and 
produced most of the food for the country. She did 
her part nobly, too! Six States full of upstanding 
people worked their 12 hours a day, centered the 
products in Boston, and backed Boston against the 
world. But we opened up new things presently; the 
wonderful West, corn and wheat belts; the new 
Soxith. with its increased and varied products. Even 
most of this was grist in the mill for a while, for 
the Pilgrim Fathers controlled much of the capital 
and pulled the strings. 
CHANGING TIMES.—The times began to change, 
however. Yankee sons went West and South and 
waxed strong. They built factories where the raw 
materials were handy; they found out that meat and 
grain came easiest out of the fertile prairie soils. 
So easily, in fact, that population might increase for 
Once in the world’s history without ever'pausing to 
worry over bread and meat. So population did in¬ 
crease, regardless; the busy factories of the East 
hummed with activity, and the new West sent along 
the food in a genuine flood. Then, before you 
realized it, tve were grown up, had our place in the 
big sun. and were doing business with the whole 
world, instead of swapping along just within the 
family. The first thing you knew, the West didn’t 
care so much whether their wheat and beef were 
sold to Massachusetts or whether they went right 
on to Europe—or maybe South to the cotton belt. 
It all depended on who paid the best prices for such 
things. But meanwhile that wonderful West had 
taken much of the heart o t of New England 
Part I. 
farmers. They couldn’t compete very well on the 
great piles of granite. They slowed up. Sons set¬ 
tled less and less frequently on the old homesteads; 
farms slowly decreased in fertility; farmhouses 
occasionally came to be tenantless; rural population 
gradually declined. 
FEEDING FROM A SMALL PANTRY.—So that 
now New England has reached the first up-against-it 
stage. She is up against the proposition of feeding 
an increasing factory population, while her agricul¬ 
ture has been steadily diminishing. It is making 
the manufacturers sit up and take notice. They 
could afford to import cotton from the South, hides 
and wool from the West, and coal from Pennsyl¬ 
vania, so long as they could count on cheap labor. 
Cheap, plentiful labor, coupled to the impetus gained 
by a long start, made New England supreme at least 
in textile and shoe manufacturing. Today, however, 
the working man in New Hampshire eats flour from 
Minnesota, beef from Illinois, pork from Indiana, 
beans from New York, butter from Wisconsin, eggs 
from Kansas, potatoes from Michigan, and most of 
his vegetables from south of his own State. About 
the only food produced at home is milk, and that is 
made from Western grain. This makes it cost him 
something to live, and he has ceased to be cheap 
labor. Her agriculture is, therefore, more of a con¬ 
cern to New England with every passing day. Apart 
from the industrial reason, there is also some signi¬ 
ficance in the maintenance of a sturdy Yankee com¬ 
munity where every man used to own his own farm, 
raised a family in the fear of God, and voted a 
straight ticket, come what might. 
COMMON PROBLEMS.—The problems of New 
England agriculture today are in a sense special, 
and in a sense common to other parts of the country. 
Dairying is the backbone, become so because milk 
is a perishable product that must be produced near 
its markets, and because the competition of West 
and South has eliminated most other farming enter¬ 
prises. Long ago the herds of beef cattle moved 
westward to a land of corn and Alfalfa. Hogs like¬ 
wise; sheep still further westward; grain growing 
passed into the hands of men who could run a plow 
or binder for five miles at a stretch without turning 
about. But the big Eastern cities require a great 
amount of milk, and it must be mainly produced 
within six hours’ haul by train. So most of the farms 
have their herds of dairy cows and sell milk when 
they can, and butter when conditions make it un¬ 
feasible to market whole milk. There are sections 
and valleys, of course, where other enterprises are 
important: fruit for instance, or poultry, or truck 
gardening, or potatoes in Aroostook County. All 
over the north farm woodlots play a big part; timber 
is one of the most important crops. In the main, 
however, New England grows hay and corn fodder, 
buys Western grain, feeds it to all dairy cattle, and 
goes hopefully forward. She lacks only the soil to 
make her a second Holland. Some of the present 
outstanding problems of this region may he sug¬ 
gested as follows: 
SOIL FERTILITY.—The present farm manage¬ 
ment is a system of growing roughage, feeding dairy 
cows, and returning the manure mainly to meadows 
or corn land. The amount of tillable land per farm 
is small—25 to 40 acres. Crop rotation is nearly a 
myth, partly because they do not generally regard 
small grains as profitable to grow, and so do not 
grow them. Meadows stay down for half a gener¬ 
ation, only a piece here and there being plowed up 
for corn and the few potatoes needed for home use. 
Some oats, barley and rye are grown, of course, but 
mostly as a necessary evil: something to follow corn 
and a crop to seed with. Grass seed is used spar¬ 
ingly. Once a meadow is “down,” do not disturb it! 
But on what manure you have, cut the grass, and 
leave well enough alone! Such is the practice quite 
generally followed. There are exceptions and varia¬ 
tions. but they stand out as such. 
ERRORS OF PRACTICE.—One might think the 
yield per acre would be high with dairy farming and 
small tillable acreage. Such is not the case, and 
there are at least two good reasons. One is that 
from 30 to 50 per cent of the rnanute is wasted. The 
other is the absence of crop rotation and lack of 
A Group of Beef Cattle in a Virginia Capture. Fin. 21 
