Farming in Early Days

 

125 years ago this month, "M. Dickson" wrote a lengthy letter to the Delaware Gazette concerning farming in the old days, entitled "Farming in the Early Days." This likely was a gentleman named Michael Dickson. He was born in Scotland in 1824 and came to the U.S. with his parents in 1831. He spent the rest of his life in Bovina, dying about six months after he wrote this letter. 

I do not know what spurred him to write this, but it is interesting to see the recollections of someone who remembered Bovina in the early 19th century. 

Bovina Centre, Sept. 18, 1899

Editor Gazette: We hear a great deal about what our forefathers did in their day. I don’t mean any disrespect to our forefathers, but they had advantages that the farmers of today have not. The country was mostly new and covered with timber sixty five or seventy years ago; that was the condition of the country at the time I have reference to. In Bovina the farmers would slash down the timber on 8 or 10 acres every winter and clear off the timber in the summer. In the fall they would sow part to rye and part to wheat, and in the spring they would sow the balance to oats and buckwheat. When harvest came they had a big crop of rye and wheat which furnished all the bread they needed for themselves and families for a year. They didn’t need any fertilizers 60 or 70 years ago. I have helped reap rye that was seven feet high; the straw was strong enough to hold up a heavy woolen coat when thrown on top. Oat and buckwheat were a sure crop, so were potatoes. The farmers plowed up a piece of sod ground for potatoes and corn and spread what manure they had on it and they were sure of a big crop of both corn and potatoes; they had all the potatoes they needed for their families and to fat 3 or four yearling hogs with. A little cracked grain and what little milk they had some kept 3 and some 6 or 8 cows, just as they had winter feed for them. 

In those good old days, they didn’t need to buy any mill feed for their stock. They fatted their own pork, beef and mutton. They produced everything they used or needed on their own farms. They raised their own sheep, clipped the wool, spun the yarn, and wove their own cloth. They raised flax and made it into cloth for summer wear and for sheets. They cut the garments and made them in the family. They got their beef hides tanned into upper leather. They bought a side of sole-leather and made and mended all their boots and shoes. If they had a fat hog or barrel of pork more than they needed, or a quarter of beef, or a few bushels of potatoes or grain, they took their team, sometimes an ox team, and took what they had to dispose of to some leather manufacturing establishment and disposed of it for the cash. Their outlay was small, their taxes were not worth naming, and in some cases not as many cents as they are dollars to-day. 

The farmers kept no more cows than they had winter feed for. In the summer the cows got all their feed in the woods. In the fall the butter buyer came around and bought their butter, and the farmer knew just what he was to get and how much it would amount to when he took it to market, and he got his cash for it. Under the present system the farmer doesn’t know what he is to get for his butter nor how much it will amount to when he sends it to market. One thing he does know that he will get just what the commission man sees fit to send him. 

The farmers used silver, paper and gold as money in those good old times and they were happy. Every man sat under his own vine and fig tree. Their public servants were honest. There was no stealing of the public money. There was no one to make them afraid. It is true that our forefathers bought the land, cleared off their farms and paid for them. They paid about $1.25 per acre for the land, but you will note that the conditions were favorable for the farmer. How is it to-day? The earth refuses to yield her increase, she refused to yield the fruit for the support of man. In this town the farmer can’t raise wheat, rye nor oats; the plant food that was in the soil 60 or 70 years ago is exhausted. The straw is small and soft, it crinkles and breaks down; the heads don’t fill. The farmers of to-day can’t raise one half the crops that they did 70 years ago. The result is the farmer has to buy all he uses. He buys all the grain he feeds his cattle and it costs him hundreds of dollars. He buys all the bread he uses in his family. He has to buy all the clothing the family needs, and he pays more duty on the clothing he buys to-day than it cost him to clothe his whole family 60 or 70 years ago. Seventy years ago everything was income, now everything is outgo. His taxes have increases a thousand fold. Now all the money the farmer can get is paper money. Silver is not money, gold we don’t get, we can’t get; the result is he has to use dishonest money. It is very bad to practice any kind of dishonesty. 

Now Mr. Editor you will see that time and practice has changed the conditions; the change is against the farmer. Some of the conditions the farmer has brought about himself through neglect and ignorance and political mismanagement in voting for big appropriations for unnecessary purpose, and in voting for dishonest, corrupt and vicious men for office, and they make corrupt, unjust and vicious laws to the damage of the farmers. There are conditions that the farmers have no control over, such as the seasons. If it is a favorable season all well, if unfavorable the farmers have no control, no remedy. But he can increase the volume of money, he can decrease the taxes, he can reduce the public expenses, and some other conditions he can change such as the bonding law. We in the State of New York have the power to make new laws and to amend old ones. The farmers in this State can make and amend our laws so as to benefit all classes. The present law is unjust and vicious. It enriches one class at the expense of the farmers. Five or six years ago the taxable property in New York State was valued at nine billion dollars. Three billion paid all the taxes, six billions did not pay one dollar of taxes. The six billion was held by millionaires and baking institutions. The three billions was owned by the farmer. This evil the farmers can remedy.

M. Dickson

I have to question some of his recollections - he doesn't seem to remember that many farmers in that era were tenants.

About a week after his letter was published, the Andes Recorder for October 6, 1899 questioned Mr. Dickson's recollection about how butter was bought in the old days:

Last week’s [Delaware] Gazette contained a letter stating the great change in things as compared to what they were sixty or seventy years ago.  In the item in which the writer states that in the fall butter buyers came around and bought the butter his memory must have played him tricks.  In those days butter buyers were as “scarce as hens teeth”, and butter had to be hauled to Catskill and they had to take just what they could get for it, perhaps 10 or 11 cents and if left unsold some got six cents per pound, and yet those are the good days that are gone and we hope they may never return.