554 
The  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
April  7,  1923 
Hope  Farm  Notes 
“The  Commuter” 
Part  I 
During  the  past  20  years  a  new  class 
or  type  of  citizen  has  been  developed  in 
this  country — the  commuter.  He  is  the 
man  (or  woman)  who  works  in  the  city 
and  has  his  home  in  the  country,  travel¬ 
ing  back  and  forth  each  day.  Genuine 
farmers  who  live  far  back  know  little 
about  this  rapidly  increasing  class  of 
Americans.  As  a  rule,  1  think  most 
farmers  rather  consider  the  commuter  as 
an  enemy— a  sort  of  social  hybrid,  neither 
a  city  man  nor  a  countryman,  and,  like 
most  hybrids,  without  power  or  hope  of 
influencing  American  affairs.  In  this  I 
think  they  are  wrong.  The  commuter 
ought  to  be  the  strongest  political  friend 
of  the  farmer.  The  two  classes  have 
much  in  common.  The  commuter  has  no 
organization.  He  is  unprotected  at  both 
ends  of  life;  that  is,  selling  his  services 
and  buying  his  supplies.  He  must  usually 
lake  what  his  city  employer  offers  him 
and  pay  what  the  local  dealers  demand. 
In  this  he  cones  closer  to  the  farmer 
than  any  other  class  I  know  of.  If  there 
are  political  and  social  combinations  to 
be  made  in  the  future,  the  farmer  and  the 
commuter  should  attempt  to  tie  up.  If 
any  man  back  among  the  hills  thinks  the 
commuter  has  a  soft  job  and  an  easy  life, 
he  should  make  another  estimate. 
*  *  *  *  * 
I  can  speak  with  authority  about  this, 
for  I  have  commuted  for  more  than  25 
years,  and  during  this  past  hard  Winter 
1  have  traveled  more  than  (50  miles  each 
week  day,  regardless  of  the  weather. 
Probably  the  New  York  commuter  has 
the  hardest  life  of  all.  The  big  city  is  on 
an  island,  and  one  must  cross  the  river 
or  go  under  it  in  order  to  reach  the  job. 
Where  I  was  raised  in  Massachusetts, 
many  workmen  live  outside  the  towns  on 
farms  or  little  country  places.  The  roads 
are  good  and  with  a  cheap  car  a  man  or 
woman  can  drive  to  the  job  in  half  an 
hour,  and  come  back  at  night  in  the  same 
time.  Under  “daylight  saving”  such  peo- 
people  can  get  up  early,  put  in  an  eight- 
hour  day  and  have  several  hours  in  the 
afternoon  to  do  as  they  please.  Some  of 
them  use  this  time  for  working  a  garden 
or  small  farm,  but  most  of  them  will  go 
roving  about  in  their  cars,  seeking  adven¬ 
tures  on  the  road.  The  cheap  car  has 
made  such  work  possible,  and  it  lias 
greatly  changed  the  appearance  of  the 
country  and  the  character  of  the  people. 
When  I  was  a  boy  the  land  was  mostly 
cleared,  at  least  along  the  road,  and  con¬ 
siderable  farming  was  done.  Now  these 
old  farms  are  mostly  grown  up  to  scrub 
oaks  and  pines.  There  may  be  a  little 
strip  along  the  highway  near  the  house 
where  the  tenant  owner  grows  a  garden 
or  a  little  chicken  feed,  but  the  light  ear 
lias  made  it  so  easy  to  get  about  and  get 
to  the  town  job  that  what  was  once  “the 
open  country”  has  now  become  a  com¬ 
muters’  settlement.  These  people  prefer 
to  live  in  the  country  and  to  bring  up 
their  children  there.  They  like1  to  feel 
that  they  own  a  piece  of  laud.  There  is 
always  the  hope  that  this  land  may  grow 
more  valuable  as  an  investment.  They 
may  be  called  gasoline  commuters.  New 
Ungland  has  developed  many  of  them. 
(  hie  reason  why  Boston  has  not  jumped 
in  population  like  New  York  is  the  fact 
that  hundreds  of  towns  and  smaller  cities 
have  held  on  to  their  manufacturing,  with 
a  good  share  of  their  labor  supply  coming 
and  going  from  the  surrounding  country. 
In  New  York  most  of  this  business  has 
been  crowded  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hud¬ 
son  ;  in  New  England  it  is  more  scattered 
out.  nearer  the  country,  the  latter  being, 
as  I  believe,  the  far  better  nlan. 
%  *  *  *  * 
Thus  the  New  York  commuter  is  in  a 
class  by  himself.  The  little  towns  within 
20  miles  of  the  city  are  not,  as  a  rule, 
manufacturing  places,  but  purely  resi¬ 
dence  towns.  I  estimate  that  in  New 
Jersey  alone  we  have  a  commuter  group 
larger  than  the  entire  population  of  Ver¬ 
mont.  Add  those  who  come  chiefly  from 
Long  Island,  Connecticut  and  lower  New 
York,  and  you  would  have  an  army  larger 
than  the  entire  population  of  Vermont 
and  New  Hampshire  and  a  large  propor¬ 
tion  of  Maine.  These  are  men,  women 
and  children  who  day  by  day  travel  to  the 
great  city,  put  in  some  sort  of  a  day’s 
work  and  then  go  back  >  ome  at  night. 
The  average  commuter  may  be  said  to 
jump  off  his  roost  in  New  Jersey,  scratch 
through  the  day  in  the  New'  York  barn¬ 
yard,  and  then  go  back  to  roost  on  his 
Jersey  perch.  In  rhe  next  few  years  I 
think  this  great  army  will  be  more  than 
doubled  when  the  new’  tunnels  are  dug  or 
pushed  under  the  river  and  the  proposed 
bridges  are  built.  In  those  coming  days 
the  commuters,  if  they  are  ever  organized, 
will  come  very  near  controlling  the  po¬ 
litical  action  of  Connecticut,  New  York, 
New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  great  influence  they  are 
to  have  upon  markets  and  distribution  of 
food.  I  think,  therefore,  that  farmers  as 
well  ns  others  should  be  interested  in  the 
way  these  commuters  live  and  the  way 
they  regard  the  food  and  labor  problems. 
They  are  the  best  customers  farmers  can 
have,  for  they  know  enough  about  grow¬ 
ing  crops  to  realise  what  farm  conditions 
mean.  Many  city  people  seem  -  tb'  think 
eggs  grow  on  trees,  or  that  wool  is  dug- 
out  of  rhe  ground ;  but  the  commuter 
surely  knows  a  sheep  from  a  rooster,  and 
he  can  at  least  imagine  what  country  life 
is. 
V  »}■  ' 
Some  of  these  commuters  are  genuine 
bac-k-to-the-landers.  They  came  out  and 
bought  a  farm.  Some  of  them  hoped  to 
make  it  pay  a  profit,  but  they  mostly 
abandon  that  idea  after  a  few'  years. 
They  now’  hang  to  the  land  in  the  hope 
that  it  will  one  day  increase  in  value,  for 
it  seems  evident  that  in  the  future  most 
of  Northern  New  Jersey  will  be  needed 
to  house  the  -  overflow  from  New  York. 
Many  of  these  back-to-the-landers  have 
kept  their  city  jobs.  They  go  and  come 
day  by  day  and  as  the  children  grow'  up 
they,  too,  step  into  the  treadmill  and 
help  out  the  family  income.  The  object 
in  most  cases  is  to  live,  keep  up  the  mort¬ 
gage  interest,  or  slowly  pay  off  the  prin¬ 
cipal,  and  thus  hold  the  land  for  later 
sale.  In  many  cases  about  all  the  real 
assets  of  such  a  family  will  be  the  land 
and  a  life  insurance  policy.  You  will  see 
at  once  the  difference  between  the  out¬ 
look  of  one  of  these  commuting  back-to- 
the-landers  and  a  farmer.  Both  are  land- 
owners.  In  one  case  the  land  increases 
in  value  without  much  regard  to  its  pro¬ 
ductive  power  or  the  crop  it  produces. 
The  owner  can  sell  his  labor  outside  of 
the  farm,  and  with  the  proceeds  from 
this  labor  keep  up  his  interest  and  wait 
for  a  rise  in  values.  He  does  not  earn 
this  increase  ;  it  is  presented  to  him  by 
what  we  call  “society,”  when  .in  the 
course  of  time  some  real  estate  promoter 
sees  that  city  people  must  have  homes 
and  uses  their  needs  and  hopes  as  a  means 
of  making  this  idle  land  valuable.  Some 
of  these  back-to-the-landers  mav  scratch 
over  a  small  corner  of  their  land  and  let 
the  rest  grow  up  to  weeds,  briers  and  brush 
until  it  is  needed  for  housing  the  overflow'. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  farmer  back  among 
the  hills  cannot  hope  to  see  his  land  gain 
in  value  that  way.  Its  value  is  based 
upon  its  productive  power  and  its  market 
situation.  This  farmer  cannot  sell  his 
labor  on  the  outside  and  take  the  proceeds 
to  support  his  farm.  He  can  have  no 
support  or  income  except  what  he  digs 
out  of  the  ground.  He  n.ay  live  on  his 
farm  for  50  years  and  find  the  selling 
value  less  than  when  he  started,  because 
population  is  moving  away  from  his  lo¬ 
cality  instead  of  swelling  up  in  his  direc¬ 
tion.  Those  of  us  who  have  seen  the 
army  of  commuters  growr  and  the  value  of 
suburban  land  increase  realize  the  danger 
that  is  coming  to  us  in  the  rapid  concen¬ 
tration  of  population  around  the  great 
cities.  It  is  drawing  wealth  and  land 
values  away  from  the  rural  sections.  1 
can  see  little  remedy  unless  some  strong 
movement  is  made  to  break  up  the  big- 
cities  and  scatter  power  and  population 
into  smaller  cities  or  towns  out  nearer 
the  farms.  Some  of  the  struggles  made 
by  these  commuting  back-to-the-landers 
to  hold  their  land  or  pay  for  it  are  strong 
and  pathetic.  Some  novelist  might  make 
a  great  story  out  of  it.  I  know  one  case 
where  a  family  started  on  one  of  these 
old  farms.  They  felt  so  sure  of  success 
that  both  man  and  woman  gave  up  their 
city  jobs.  For  two  years  they  had  prac¬ 
tically  no  income  at  all  from  the  farm, 
and  they  faced  ruin.  They  found  that  the 
woman  could  get  her  old  job  back,  so  she 
started  commuting — going  nearly  75  miles 
every  day.  The  man  remained  at  home, 
did  the  farm  work  and  as  much  of  the 
housework  as  he  could,  and  with  the 
woman’s  wages  to  help  they  finally  made 
that  farm  provide  them  a  living  and  pay 
a  little  income.  It  requires  pretty  fine 
stuff  in  human  beings  to  work  like  that. 
❖  ❖  ❖  ❖ 
The  great  proportion  of  these  com-, 
niuters  are  not  land-owners.  Some  of 
them  own  little  places  which  are  being 
paid  for  through  some  building  and  loan 
association,  but  the  great  majority  of 
them  are  renters,  and  thus  we  have  the 
commuters’  town  every  few  miles  along 
our  railroads.  The  true  commuters’  town 
presents  one  of  the  most  interesting  studies 
in  all  American  life;  it  is  such  a  curious 
and  at  times  hopeless  mixture  of  tribes 
and  traits,  people  without  any  background 
of  childhood  associations  trying  to  live 
together  and  develop  some  sort  of  clumsy 
community  spirit.  The  other  morning, 
while  waiting  for  the  train,  I  studied  one 
group  of  commuters.  There  was  an  Eng¬ 
lishman.  then  a  group  of  Swedes,  several 
Germans  or  Russians,  two  or  three 
French  people,  an  Irishman,  an  Italian, 
several  Hebrews,  a  Norwegian  and  a 
Dane,  a  Canadian  and  an  Austrian.  Of 
the  Americans  born  in  this  country,  there 
were  people  from  New  England,  Ken¬ 
tucky,  Alabama,  Ohio  and  the  Far  West. 
People  from  all  over  the  world  had  been 
thrown  together  by  accident  in  our  little 
town.  Practically  every  one  of  them  had 
passed  the  impressionable  years  of  youth 
under  other  and  peculiar  conditions. 
Here  we  were  thrown  together  “without 
any  background  of  association,  trying  to 
find  some  common  impulse  or  cause  where 
where  we  could  organize  and  group  our 
social  needs  and  desires.  Our  children 
can  get  together  and  in  the  future  they 
will  regard  our  place  as  the  “dear  old 
town,”  hut  how  can  we  older  people  do  it? 
There  you  have  the  great  problem  of  the 
commuter  town  What  common  senti¬ 
ment-,  ran 
gallons  of  deadly  spray 
at  less  than  0$  a  gallon 
10  lb.  tins —  $13.50 
2  lb.  tins —  3.50 
lb.  tins —  1.25 
loz  bottles —  .35 
10  lb.  tins  make 
800  to  1000  gallons 
of  spray. 
Next  to  its  deadly  certainty,  the 
best  thing  about  Hall’s  Nicotine 
Sulphate  is  its  very  low  cost.  It 
can  be  diluted  with  water  800  to 
1 000  times  to  make  a  deadly  spray 
costing  less  than  2  cents  a  gallon. 
Hall’s  Nicotine  Sulphate  con¬ 
tains  40%  pure  Nicotine  —  the 
most  powerful  contact  poison 
known.  Being  a  vegetable  ex¬ 
tract,  it  will  not  harm  fruit,  flower 
or  foliage.  But  it  will  wipe  out 
aphids,  thrips  and  similar  insects. 
Use  it  next  season. 
Buy  from  your  dealer.  If  he  is 
net  supplied,  send  us  your  order 
along  with  his  name. 
NICOTINE  SULPHATE 
HallTobacco  Chemical  Go. 
114  East  16th  St..  New  York  City 
Reveals  the  faith  of  the  farmer 
in  the  resources  of  the  soil 
Does  your  soil  furnish  enough  Plant  Food  for  a 
profitable  crop? 
Every  200-pound .  bag  of  V-C  Fertilizer  used 
per  acre  on  Corn,  will  produce  under  good  cultural 
conditions,  an  increase  of  10  bushels  of  grain, 
equivalent  to  100  pounds  of  pork. 
Compare  the  cost  of  the  Bag  of  Fertilizer  with 
what  you  get  for  the  100  pounds 
of  pork. 
You  can  make  this  profit.  Ask 
your  dealer,  or  write  our 
Agricultural  Service  Bureau 
Virginia-Carolina  Chemical  Co. 
Home  Office,  Richmond,  Va. 
* 
and  warehouses  at  all  points. 
Ask  Our 
Agricultural 
Service  Bureau 
Dealers 
