Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

by Stephen Hines

  These 25 acres of unimproved, poor land have been made into a truly remarkable little farm. During last season it produced the following crops: Ten acres of corn, 400 bushels, 2 acres of oats, 80 bushels, 1 acre of millet hay, 2 tons, 1 acre of sorghum, 115 gallons of molasses; cowpeas, 100 bushels. Besides these crops there was a 5-acre truck patch which furnished a good income thru the summer, but of which no account was kept. There has been sold off the place this last season livestock amounting to $130, poultry $15, butter $250, and grain $35. The rest of the grain was still on the place when this was written. Not bad for a 25-acre farm, is it?

  As there is a young orchard of 3 acres, a pasture of 3 acres and necessarily some ground used for building sites, you may wonder where the cowpeas were raised. Mr. Barton plants cowpeas with all other crops. He says it is the surest, quickest and cheapest way to build up the soil. When garden crops are harvested cowpeas are planted in their place, they follow the oats and rye and are planted with the corn.

  There never has been a pound of commercial fertilizer used on Show You Farm. When clearing his land, Mr. Barton traded wood for stable manure in the town, so that he paid, with his labor, for 300 tons of stable fertilizer. Except for this, the soil has been built up by rotation of crops and raising of cowpeas, until from a complete failure of the corn crop the first year, because of poverty of the soil, last year’s bountiful crops were harvested.

  By the good farming methods of the Barton family they made their land bring them an average of $30 an acre even in the last dry seasons.

  Mr. Barton believes in cultivation, both with plows and by hand. He is old fashioned enough to hoe his corn. A neighbor passing and seeing him hoeing said, “If I can’t raise corn without hoeing it I won’t raise it,” and he didn’t for it was a dry season. As Mr. Barton says, “The reason there are so many POOR farmers is because there are so many poor FARMERS.” For the last four years, Show You Farm has taken the blue ribbon for general farm exhibit at the Tri-county Stock Show at Mountain Grove and never less than eight blue ribbons in all.

  The Barton children have no idea of leaving the farm. They are too much interested in their business for they are full partners with their parents. Mr. Barton says it is easy to interest children in the farm. All that is necessary is to talk to them about the work as it is going on and let them help to plan.

  When he is planting the crops he plans with them about the results. “Let’s figure it,” he will say. If we plant a hill of cantaloupes every 4 feet, we ought to raise two on every hill and if we sell them for 5 cents each that will bring us $128 an acre. But we should do better than that, we ought to make them bring us $300 an acre. And by explaining to them how to do this they are interested and eager to see how much they can make. The children work better when they are interested, Mr. Barton says, and they are willing to stay on the farm.

  It is not all work and money making at the Barton home, however. In strawberry time the Sunday school is invited out and treated to strawberries with cream and sugar. Last season it took 8 gallons of strawberries to supply the feast. When melons are ripe there is another gathering and sometimes as many as 100 persons enjoy the delicious treat.

  In the long winter evenings work and pleasure are mixed and while one of the family reads aloud some interesting book, the others shell the cowpeas that have been gathered in the fall.

  Mr. Barton has not been allowed to drop all his outside activities. He has been elected secretary of the Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Company and is helping them to organize for their mutual benefit. Also his services are often in demand to supply a country pulpit here and there, for once a Methodist preacher a man is always more or less a Methodist preacher, and as Mr. Barton goes on his daily way, both by acts and words, he is preaching kindness, helpfulness and the brotherhood of man.

  He also preaches an agricultural theology. He says that robbing the soil is a sin, the greatest agricultural sin, and that like every other sin it brings its own punishment.

  That Mr. Barton has not committed that sin, one is assured when looking over the farm and what he has accomplished is certainly encouraging for the man with a bit of poor land. Mr. Barton’s advice to such a man is “not to go looking for a better place but MAKE one.”

  The Barton farmstead is built on rather an original plan. The house is 38 by 24 feet, with a kitchen, at the back, 12 14 feet. Joining the back porch of this kitchen is a concrete store room 12 12 feet with the well in a corner, and joining this store room is a long shed 44 56 feet. This is all under one roof and is 170 feet long. It is planned to soon build a barn beyond and joining the shed. It will then be 200 feet from the front door to the back and visitors will be welcome all the way.

  What Would You Do?

  April 5, 1918

  What would you do if you had a million dollars?

  I asked the question once of a young man of my acquaintance. He was the only son of rich parents and had been reared like the lilies of the field to “toil not.” Then suddenly his father decided that he must learn to work. Working for a salary was supposed to teach him the value of money and learning the business would teach him how to care for his father’s property when he should inherit it. But he did not take kindly to the lessons. He had been a butterfly so long he could not settle down to being a busy bee. Office hours came too early in the morning, and why should he keep office hours, anyway, when the fishing and hunting were good?

  “Bert,” I said to him one day, “what would you do if you had a million dollars?”

  Bert looked at me gravely a moment and then, with a twinkle in his eye, said earnestly: “If I had a million dollars I would buy a bull dog, a big brindle one. I would keep him under my office desk and if anyone came in and said ‘business’ to me, I would say, ‘Take him, Tige’.”

  I read in a California paper last week of an altogether different type of man who had arrived at somewhat the same conclusion as Bert, but by exactly the opposite route. This man was an old desert prospector, “desert rat” as they are called in the West, who had spent years hunting for gold in the desert. He came out to the nearest town with his burro and packs after supplies and found that he was heir to a fortune and that there had been quite a search thru the country to find him. He did not want the money and at first refused to take it. But it was his and he must make some disposition of it, so he insisted that a trustee be appointed to take care of it for him.

  The old “desert rat,” with all his worldly possessions in a pack on the back of a burro, and Bert who had grown to manhood with no wish unsatisfied, that money could gratify, had both come to the same decision—the burden of riches was more than they would bear.

  The real character of men and women comes to the surface under stress, and sudden riches is as strong a test as any.

  Just now there is a chance of fortune coming to unexpected places in the Ozark hills thru the boom in mining operations. Several farm women were talking over the prospects.

  “What will you do when they strike it rich on your place?” some one asked.

  “Oh! I’ll get some new spring clothes and some more Holsteins,” answered Mrs. Slade.

  “Clothes, of course, but who would stop there?” exclaimed Mrs. Rice. “I shall buy motor cars and diamonds.”

  “I’ll sell out the place and leave these hills,” said Mrs. Wade. “How about you, Mrs. Woods?”

  “I wouldn’t go away,” said Mrs. Woods slowly. “I should just like to help and I can help better where I am accustomed to people and things.”

  Her serious face lighted and her eyes shone as she continued.

  “I do so desire to help a little and there is so much one could do with a little money, not just ordinary charity, there are so many persons looking after that, but some playthings for children here and there who do not have any; the pleasure of paying a mortgage now and then, for some hard-working family who could not pay it themselves; just helping those who need it before they become discouraged. It would be so much better t
han taking care of them after they have given up trying to help themselves. I’m going to do some of these things if they find ore on our place.”

  And so they showed their different characters and dispositions and the objects of their lives—business and show and snobbishness and love for others with a sincere desire to share good fortune with those less fortunate.

  What would you do if you should suddenly become rich? Think out the answer and then look at yourself impartially by the light that answer will throw upon you! It is surprising what an opinion one sometimes forms of one’s self by mentally standing off and looking on as at a stranger.

  We Must Not Be Small Now

  April 20, 1918

  We read so much in the papers of graft and price profiteering, of federal investigation of first one business and then another, of treachery and doubledealing and strikes and riots, that one is tempted to be discouraged with people in general until one remembers that crimes and criminals are news and as such are given prominence on first pages of newspapers with glaring headlines. It is seldom that good deeds and their doers have such startling news value, but there are still plenty of them in the world. People are still kind and neighborly and are quietly and unobtrusively helping each other over hard places as they always have done.

  Mrs. Sells was left a widow last winter and this spring she wishes to make a start with poultry in order to be self-supporting and able to keep her home. The neighbors have contributed the eggs and one will hatch them in her incubator to give Mrs. Sells her start.

  Mr. Ashton was unable, because of illness, to put in his crop of oats. His neighbors have done the work for him.

  I know a busy, up-to-date farmer who in his own way is helping his neighbors and his country. He is selling, for seed, a particularly high-priced kind of bean and some especially good cowpeas at just half the price charged in the seed catalogs. His price makes him a good profit, he says, and that is enough. Poultry is a specialty on his farm but he is selling eggs for hatching at a great reduction from his usual price. He wishes his neighbors to be successful in their farming and to increase the supply of food.

  Isn’t it refreshing to think of such a man as a change from excess profits? There is more of this kind of thing being done than appears on the surface for it is not given publicity. The spirit of helpfulness and comradeship is moving us all more or less.

  Haven’t you noticed a kinder feeling, in your heart, for your friends lately—a little more thoughtfulness for their comfort and well-being; just a touch more tenderness for your dear ones, even those who are in no danger of being called by the draft? It seems to me there is a drawing closer together, a feeling of standing shoulder to shoulder with my friends and neighbors that I have never experienced before. I am sure it is not all imagination.

  There had been a little misunderstanding and consequent bad feeling in an organization to which I belong. It has been causing quite a little tempest in a teapot as such things always do, even tho they should not break out where they have more room for mischief. I was surprised to hear one of the parties in the controversy say: “I wish we might all go on and forget it. That’s the only thing to do—just go on and forget it!”

  Another person who has been a strong partisan on the other side said to me the same day: “What’s the use of chewing the rag forever? It is much better to let it all drop and work together. There is no time to keep hashing things over and stirring up trouble.” How long can any quarrel last when the parties to it begin to talk in that way?

  Our common danger, a common cause and the work we are doing together is making us appreciate one another more and understand the littleness of petty jealousies and disagreements. The big things of life are crowding out the little unpleasant differences.

  How can I hold a grudge against my neighbor when I know that his son, “somewhere in France,” is interposing his body as a shield between my home and the danger that threatens it? How is it possible for me to do an unkind thing to my acquaintance when her son is braving the dangers of submarines and enemy warships while convoying my son safely to France to do his part in the fighting or perhaps helping to protect the ship that is bringing him home from foreign shores?

  Then, too, if I can help my neighbor to raise a better crop or have better success with his stock, it will be just so much more to feed all our “kin folks” at home and abroad. Under these circumstances, how can we be selfish and self-centered? The old saying that, “everybody’s business is nobody’s business” is certainly all wrong now and anybody’s business is everybody’s business instead.

  We will feel differently toward one another than ever before when we have had time to realize these things and if there has been any friction or misunderstanding, we will surely “just go on and forget it.”

  What the War Means to Women

  May 5, 1918

  “This is a woman’s war and the women will see to it that before the war is ended the world shall be made safe for women.” This sentiment was expressed by a woman in my hearing soon after the declaration of war by the United States.

  Every war is more or less a woman’s war, God knows, but is this in an especial way a woman’s war? Never before in the history of the world has war been deliberately made upon the womanhood of the world and motherhood, woman’s crown and glory, been made her scourge and shame. The tortures by savages, tales of which used to make our blood run cold did not equal in horror and cruelty what has been inflicted upon educated, refined women and ignorant peasant women alike.

  Stripped naked and driven along the roads out of their own country a sport for drunken soldiery. Thrown by hundreds into the rivers when the crowds of soldiers had tired of them—this was a part of the war in Armenia.

  Death by thousands, after nameless horrors and suffering, along the roads of Poland!

  Driven over the snow covered mountains of Servia; dying of hunger and exhaustion and wounds, a fate preferred to falling into the hands of the invaders—this was the fate of the women of Servia.

  Tortured and defiled, mutilated and murdered in Belgium and northern France! The mind revolts and the soul sickens at even trying to contemplate the things that women have been made to suffer by Germany’s invading armies.

  There has been a planned, deliberate attempt, by the enemy, to destroy the other nations of the world. To destroy a nation, its women and children must be exterminated and so a part of this incredible plot has been to so mutilate and destroy the women of those nations that they will bear no more children to perpetuate their race.

  All over the world women are bravely taking their part in the conflict and doing what they can to defend those things they hold most sacred, their homes, their children and their honor. In all the allied countries women are filling places of responsibility and danger, doing hard, unpleasant work to help in the struggle to “make the world safe for women.”

  Women are showing their fearlessness on all the battle fronts. In Russia when the soldiers refused to fight, the women formed the famous “Battalion of Death” and met the enemy on the first line. They held their section of the line, too, when on every side the soldiers retreated in disorder and tho every woman in the battalion was killed or wounded. Later, with their ranks refilled, this battalion of women took part in the fighting at Petrograd, defending their position dauntlessly, seemingly without fear of death.

  The women in the Red Cross units on the western front hesitate at nothing they find to do to help the allied cause. They were the last to leave the abandoned towns, before the Germans entered and they helped the refugees to escape, picked up and removed scores of wounded, driving their own trucks and motor cars, established temporary kitchens near the front to feed the soldiers who had not eaten for hours and, when the emergency arose, took charge of the military traffic and directed the columns of guns, cavalry, supply wagons and troops and prevented a traffic jam.

  The women of the American Red Cross are winning honor on the western battle front. They act as cooks or ch
auffeurs, traffic policemen, stretcher bearers or grave diggers as the occasion arises.

  Women in sheltered America have perhaps been slow to realize what the war means to them but they are beginning to understand. Among them, as among the men, are some pessimists and whiners, also some cowards and slackers, but they are few.

  When the British retreated on the west, the first of April, a man remarked, “They’re licking the stuffing out of us, licking us every day,” and a woman answered, “What does one retreat amount to? A man isn’t whipped in a fight even if he is knocked down, if he just gets up and comes again.”

  I like the spirit of the man whom I heard say, “We can’t be whipped! We won’t be whipped! We’ll fight for 60 years if we must, but we’ll never give up!”

  A widow whose son volunteered and is now in France, said she was so proud of him that she had no time to be sorry; that she was glad he had gone and could not understand how any young man could stay at home.

  Another woman, speaking of her son who had volunteered, said she was proud of him and that he would have been ashamed to look his sister in the face if he had not gone to help protect her from the fate of the girls of Belgium and France.

  The congregation at the church was remarkable on Easter Sunday for the absence of new hats and the large number of Liberty Bond pins and Red Cross buttons. One woman who has always taken great pride in her apparel said to me: “I can’t get a new hat this summer. I’m paying for my Liberty Bond and helping with the Red Cross and someway new hats don’t seem to matter.”

  The little town of Mansfield and immediate vicinity, oversubscribed its quota in the Third Liberty Loan.

  How About the Home Front?

  May 20, 1918

  When we buy Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps, we are open to suspicion, in our own minds at least, of not being entirely disinterested. We may be a little influenced in our saving and buying by a hope of gain, for Liberty Bonds and Savings Stamps are good investments. They are gilt-edged securities and a paying proposition.