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A A ^ American Agriculturist, July 5, 19 
An Ancient Tale With a Modem Mora 
Fool Nostrums That Failed To Solve Surplus Problems 
By JARED VAN WAGENEN, Jr. 
T HAVE just been reading a big book— 
■*- Bruce’s “Economic History of Vir¬ 
ginia in the Seventeenth Century.” The 
book runs into two volumes aggregating 
more than twelve hundred pages and 
constitutes a most exhaustive commen¬ 
tary on a period which by our American 
standards of age seems far off and misty. 
The writer is that type of research scholar 
from whom it is literally true that “ nothing 
is too insignificant to be noted.” It 
would seem that the larger part of the 
history of a struggling English colony 
three centuries ago must be buried and 
lost forever and yet by patient research, 
by delving in the long forgotten archives 
of the Colonial Legislatures, by painfully 
deciphering faded family letters and 
yellowed diaries and going over the old 
wills and property inventories decaying 
in the vaults of Y irginia Court Houses 
he has found it possible to reconstruct 
the life of that period even to the days of 
Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas and 
to make clear to us the founding of those 
great feudal landed estates which although 
they came to an end suddenly and totally 
in the cataclysm of the Civil War will 
nevertheless remain forever as the one 
inexhaustible mine of romance in America. 
I think it was John Wise, son of the 
war-time Governor of Virginia, who says 
that the wealth, the education, the cul¬ 
ture, the political power and influence of 
the Old South was held in the hands of 
about 8,000 great, powerful hereditary 
families. It was a strange, picturesque, 
baronial agricultural civilization of which 
the glamour still remains, although the 
substance has perished. But the moralist 
can not but remark that in the end the 
triumph in our national life has been to 
the stern Puritan on his stone strewn New 
England hillsides rather than to the 
southern Cavalier. 
But what I began to set down is some 
thought and comments upon the story 
of tobacco in Virginia as told by Bruce. 
Some of us may remember the old rhyme 
“Tobacco is an Indian weed 
That from the Devil doth proceed. : 
Whether or not it be true as generally 
stated that it was Sir Walter Raleigh 
w r ho first brought the knowledge of 
tobacco to Europe, at any rate the white 
man found the habit one that was very 
easy to acquire because it seems that only 
fifty years later there was a large and 
eager market for the weed. Almost from 
the very beginnings of Virginia in 1607 
and even until to-day, tobacco has been 
the one great money crop of the State. 
Lying a little too far north for cotton or 
indigo or cane, tobacco was the one thing 
that the State had for export to England. 
The crop had a long—sometimes palmy— 
sometimes very depressed history. There 
were periods when it sold for more than 
three shillings a pound and three shillings 
was a large sum of money 300 years ago. 
Those were the days when even the 
streets of Jamestown were given over to 
the cultivation of the plant. It was for 
the sake of this crop that the black man 
was stolen from Africa—openly and 
legally until 1808—secretly and unlawfully, 
occasionally at least, until the last days 
of the Confederacy. 
My first thought is this—that the 
story of \ irginia tobacco is an impressive 
warning concerning the evils of one crop 
farming. The State had no real live-stock 
husbandry, it had of course no commercial 
fertilizers, there was no knowledge of 
legumes or cover crops and no under¬ 
standing of the advantages of returning 
vegetable matter to the soil. The crop 
w r as one that always and everywhere 
has come to be recognized as especially 
hard on land.” So finally Virginia 
tobacco growing became a rather highly 
organized system of soil robbery—clearing 
the land—growing the one crop until the 
yields were no longer profitable and then 
at incredible expense and labor clearing 
new lands for the golden plant only to 
have them become worthless in a dozen 
years. Thus the State was overrun 
and her forests destroyed out of all pro¬ 
portion to the permanent agriculture 
that was established. It was a singularly 
improvident and wasteful type of hus¬ 
bandry. 
We generally think of the farm labor 
shortage as essentially a very modern 
phenomenon. As a matter of fact, it 
seems to have existed in Virginia in an 
acute form 300 years ago. A crop which 
constantly demanded new areas of virgin 
soil, which could be cleared and prepared 
only by the expenditure of vast labor and 
which was cultivated mainly by the use 
of the hoe and mattock rather than any 
horse-drawn implement, demanded a 
great labor supply which seems never t 
have been sufficient. Indeed, Bruc 
remarks that the system of slaver 
sprang up under the operation of a 
irresistible economic law.” 
But what I began to write was abou 
the part played by tobacco in Virgini 
for a century. To an extent probabl 
true of no other crop, it constitute 
other crop agriculture. It was practical! 
the one source of revenue and i 
dominated everything. It was not only 
as might be expected, a medium of loca 
trade and barter but it was absolutely 
and officially legal tender in the Colony 
faxes, court fees/ inheritances unde 
wills and debts of all sorts might be pai< 
in this leafy currency. Probably there i 
no other example in history "where ; 
single crop so dominated what was it 
some respects a highly developed an< 
cultured agricultural civilization. Tlx 
financial transactions and the bookkeep 
ing of the time were reckoned not in the 
pounds “sterling” of the mother country 
but in “pounds” of tobacco. 
Now here is the matter which has 
suggested to me the title of an ancient 
tale with a modern moral. Unfortunately 
tobacco fluctuated in price—sometimes, 
very wildly. At times it sold as high as 
three and one-half shillings a pound and 
at other times it fell as low as one-half 
pence. Under the former conditions the 
planters throve wonderfully and lived 
like feudal barons on their thousand 
acre estates—-but when tobacco fell the 
whole economic system of the colony 
collapsed. YV hat wonder then that these 
Y irginia planters, many of wdioin were 
among the most intelligent and best 
educated men of their time, deemed that 
above everything else there was needed 
some method of taking care of the surplus 
and stabilizing the industry. For a full 
hundred years or more the laws passed 
by the Colonial Legislature are full of 
efforts to do just this thing. It was easy 
to try out what could be done by legisla¬ 
tion because the House of Burgesses was 
made up of the ruling class of planters 
and there was surely no difficulty to 
form an “agricultural bloc” which was 
eager to do anything that promised to 
be of aid to the one great industry. These 
men seemed to perennially hope wonder¬ 
ful tilings from law, being if anything 
even more childlike in this respect than 
{Continued on page 8) 
Farmers on the Broad Highway 
{Continued from, page 8) 
the Saco River valley. The Saco River runs 
high in the spring-time, and is the scene of 
many famous log drives. It starts in the White 
Mountain range and finds its way to the ocean 
across the State of Maine. 
Our business of the next day was to climb 
Mt. Washington, the king of the range. Other 
peaks are also named for our presidents, such 
as Mt. Adams, Mt. Jefferson, and Mt. Madi¬ 
son. Luckily it was a fairly clear day, but it 
was pretty cold for mountain climbing. This 
mountain is up-to-date, having both rail and 
auto road to the top. The toll was pretty 
steep, and so was the grade. We put the 
Franklin in low gear, and at five miles an hour 
made the climb in an hour and a half. We 
just looked wise at the “Water here” signs 
along the trail. It sort of gets you to keep 
going up so long. The climb is 6,292 feet in 
eight miles. Figure the grade—it is up, up, 
then some more. It is a wonderful sight to 
start at the bottom where the trees are tall 
and stately, and see them gradually get shorter 
and shorter. At two-thirds of the way the 
trees give it up, being only weather-beaten 
scrub spruces, firs and mountain ash a foot in 
height. Then there is just rocks with a very 
little grass. The auto road is very expensive 
to keep up, there being so much wash from bad 
thunder showers. Dirt is very scarce here. 
Crushed stone constitutes the road at the very 
top. From the “tip-top house” can be seen 
the Atlantic Ocean at Portland, Maine, Mt. 
Mansfield in Vermont,.,Lower Canada to the 
north, and Lake Winnepesaukee to the south, 
sixty miles away, which we had left the day 
before. Great views can be had of the moun¬ 
tains all about, and the lakes, rivers, and 
villages in the valleys below. There is quite a 
hotel at the top, and many people spend the 
night up there to see the sun rise the next 
morning, weather permitting. The mountain 
is very treacherous, as to storms at any time 
of the year. There have been people frozen 
fo death on the foot trails even in the month of 
August. There is a sort of awe attached to 
Little Mildred standing in front of “Jack- 
the-Giant-Killer’s Chair” at Gardner, Mass. 
being up there so high, dodging the stars and 
shaking hands with the clouds. Anyhow, we 
all took a long breath when the foot-hills were 
ours once again. Mrs. S. said, “Never again.” 
lorty years ago when the State department 
at Concord was asked for a charter to build 
the railroad, there was great scoffing. One 
man said, “Why not a charter to the moon?” 
The road was made feasible by a third rail 
of cogs. The gearings of the engines are so 
low that they make only three miles an hour. 
The following day we took a ten-mile run 
over to the Maine State line, and entered the 
little town of Fryburg. This “burg” is noted 
for three things. First, Daniel Webster taught 
school there once upon a time; second, the 
beautiful elm trees that shade its streets; and 
third, the “Argue-not” hotel. They set the 
price—you say not a word. 
Our next move was toward the Canadian 
border. From the White Mountains on to 
Colebrook the farming land is very good, 
harm buildings are in good shape for the most 
part, and many farmers exhibit the Farm 
Bureau sign. There was real New Hampshire 
farming land, the home of stone walls and blue 
dump carts. Good crops of grain and potatoes 
were in evidence, but corn was poor; cold, 
wet weather told the story. At Dicksville 
Notch we saw i corn frost-bitten on August 
28th. Dicksville Notch is a real beauty spot. 
The balsam trees around a small lake there all 
shut in by mountain sides have a beauty that 
is beyond my descriptive powers. At this 
lake there is a very large summer hotel, named 
“The Balsams.” 
{Continued next week ) 
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