American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man.”— Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 114 For the Week Ending August 16, 1924 Number 7 
The Climax of a Long, Hard Fight 
The Hill Farmer of the East Is Making 
M OST of us will remember the story of 
how the author of Pilgrim’s Progress 
on seeing a man being carried in a cart 
to die on the gallows fervently ex¬ 
claimed, “But for the Grace of God—there goes 
John Bunyan.” It is an old story that for me 
never loses its appealing force. Even so I am 
tempted to paraphrase it by remarking that only 
by a narrow chance did I escape being a Hill 
Farmer. If my great-grandfather Jared, trekking 
along the trail of the Lunen¬ 
burg Pike in July of the year 
1800 had halted his ox team 
a few miles further east, then 
I suppose I would have 
belonged to the class of whom 
I write, but fortunately for 
me and for my children he 
was not moved to say 
“Whoa” until he came to a 
limestone valley lying in the 
lap of the hills. But I 
suppose this happy fortune 
was by accident or Provi¬ 
dence rather than any par¬ 
ticular knowledge or design 
upon the part of my great¬ 
grandfather. 
I think it is John Fox, Jr., 
who in one of his books has 
made a striking epigram to 
the effect that the breaking 
of a linch-pin in the Cumber¬ 
land Gap changed the course 
of History in America, be¬ 
cause this little, almost in¬ 
significant accident, turned 
j the band of Virginia pioneers 
i into Kentucky and left Ohio 
to be settled by the men of 
New England with their very 
different ideals and their 
distinct culture. If the Virginians had carried 
slavery into Ohio then it is easy to believe that 
this “peculiar institution” might have attained 
an even far greater dominion in America. It is 
always most interesting and of course absolutely 
futile to speculate upon what might have hap¬ 
pened if only some slight incident had occurred 
some other way. 
But in any case I return to my original state¬ 
ment that I miss being a Hill Farmer by only five 
miles. Hillside Farm lies high and we have some 
I steep hills and many stones. I suppose that when 
I the typical Corn Belt farmer from Iowa sees it 
he shakes his head and in his heart pities me and 
wonders why we cling so persistently to a farm 
where there is need of side-hill plows and where it 
I is necessary on some fields to “chain the wheel ’ 
I when drawing off the hay. But I am willing to be 
I pitied a little and am not greatly troubled in soul 
I thereby because I remember that our hills are 
I limestone hills and some of the steepest of them 
I grow alfalfa splendidly, and a farm that will grow 
I alfalfa easily is never a really bad farm, and 
I today I look out upon a piece of wheat that under 
I the July sun is becoming a billowing “field of the 
I Cloth of Gold” (that lovely phrase of an early 
I English chronicler), and I know that it wall yield 
I at least twice as much as the average of the 
I world-famous wheat States. New York has a 
By JARED VAN WAGENEN, JR. 
large area of hilly and yet very productive land. 
But I go due south and cross the valley and 
climb the steep, rough slope and within five miles 
I come into the typical Hill Country—where the 
valleys are narrow and the fields stone-strewn and 
worse—where the soil is made from shale instead 
of limestone, so that legumes find it hard to grow; 
and here farm life has been and is and always will 
be a hard and I fear a losing struggle. Understand 
me: Not for one moment in any way do I wish 
to sneer at the Hill Farmer. The finest racial 
stock the world ever knew—bar none—was the 
New England Puritan and the larger part of 
New York was peopled by a secondary New 
England emigration. As Abram went forth out 
of Ur of the Chaldees “not knowing whither he 
went,” so these folk fared forth seeking a heritage 
for themselves and their children somewhere in 
the mythical West. There was nothing in New 
York that could have any terrors for men reared 
on the hard, thin fields of Vermont or Connecti¬ 
cut or Western Massachusetts. Some of them 
by happy chance chose the Genesee Road and 
pressed on into the lovely Finger Lake country 
or the fat Ontario Shore and here their descen¬ 
dants have reared what is one of the finest agricul¬ 
tural civilizations the world has ever known. 
That New England farmer was a mighty ex¬ 
plorer—it would seem almost a nomad. It is 
said that during the first ten years following the 
close of the Revolution forty thousand New Eng¬ 
land families descended the Ohio. But some 
(knowledge as to where they were bound was very 
scanty and indefinite) failed of the fair and fertile 
parts of our State and found their Promised Land 
in the Catskills or the North Country or the 
Southern Tier. Nevertheless there was something 
His Last Stand 
in the Puritan which enabled him to withstand 
agricultural adversity. He built his home in 
narrow valleys or on windswept hill tops, but he 
maintained his peculiar culture and ideals. He 
took along with him his church and his school— 
to some extent also he took his town meeting, 
although in New York the township and the town 
meeting do not have the same unique importance 
in civic life. A famous Professor of American 
History has declared that the Rhode Island 
town meeting still remains 
the world’s best example of a 
pure democracy. 
Thus it has come to pass 
that some of the best blood 
in the world and some of the 
most dauntless men are Hill 
Farmers. Always these hill 
farms have been a breeding 
ground for famous folk. I 
am thinking now of a little 
brown farm house snuggled 
in the elbow of the valley far 
up in the Catskills—a farm 
where life must always have 
been a stern struggle—a 
place of plain living even if 
of high thinking—but I re¬ 
member that out of this 
farm house went a boy who 
became a great Bishop of a 
great Church—almost a na¬ 
tional figure when he died a 
year or two ago. You may 
not lightly dismiss a civili¬ 
zation that can breed men 
like that. 
So in short, my particular 
interest, my admiration, is 
with this type of farmer 
above all others. We do not 
really need to worry over the 
man whose farm lies along the concrete highway 
in the broad valley. Doubtless he has his troubles 
along with the rest of us and grumbles over the 
price of milk, but after all his position is secure. 
Someone—he or his successors—will always farm 
these lands. But I do pay honor to the Hill 
Farmer because he has fought a good fight. 
So sometimes when I have a friend who I 
would like to have know something of our farms, 
I leave the State highway and turn south and 
set the machine against the hills and go up and up 
to where the fields are little and steep and stone- 
strewn and fenced with the stone walls that an 
earlier generation of men built and all about are 
the tumbled billows of the noble hills with far-off 
horizons and blue distances—and then we talk 
together concerning what the future holds for 
these lands. 
For I fear—yes, I know—that the Hill Farmer 
fights a brave, tenacious and yet losing battle. 
He has been losing steadily and consistently since 
the close of the Civil War. Every step in agricul¬ 
tural progress and method only increases the 
disparity between him and his more fortunate 
competitor. In the days of the cradle and the 
light side-hill plow he was less fatally handicapped 
than he has been since the coming of the grain- 
binder and the tractor. There are parts of our 
(Continued on page 111 ) 
“Thus it has come to pass that some of the best blood in the world and some of the most dauntless men 
are Hill Farmers. Always these hill farms have been a breeding ground for famous folk.” 
