PORTRAIT OF PROFESSOR ROBERTS Painted in 1903 by Collins and now in Roberts Hall, Cornell University. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FARM BOY BY ISAAC PHILLIPS ROBERTS, M. Agr. Professor Emeritus and for thirty years Professor and Dean of the College of Agriculture Cornell University ALBANY J. B. LYON COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1916 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION BY LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY . . i OUTLINE OF PROFESSOR I. P. ROBERTS LIFE . 5 How I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK . . 7 SECTION I BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE, 1833-54 . n THE ROBERTS FAMILY . . . 17 PIONEER LIFE OF NEW YORK STATE . 23 INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN MY BOYHOOD 27 EDUCATION AND PLEASURES OF THE COM- MUNITY 59 RELIGION AND POLITICS IN SENECA COUNTY. 71 AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS IN THE MIDDLE- NINETEENTH CENTURY . . . -75 GROWING UP. SCHOOL TEACHING AND CAR- PENTERING 92 SECTION II EARLY MANHOOD IN THE MIDDLE WEST, 1854-73 105 How I CAME TO Go WE ST. PIONEER INDIANA AND THE AGUE ..... 107 MARRIAGE 121 MY FIRST FARM AT KINGSBURY . . 122 OVERLAND TRIP TO SOUTHEASTERN IOWA IN 1862 125 AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS IN IOWA DURING THE WAR . . . . . .129 How I CAME TO BE A COLLEGE PROFESSOR IN 1869 152 THE DIFFICULTIES OF EARLY AGRICULTURAL TEACHING . 160 330328 iv CONTENTS PAGE SECTION III LIFE AND WORK AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 1874-1903 V' . . . 175 LEARNING TO FARM OVER AGAIN IN NEW YORK . . . . . . .187 FARM BUILDINGS AT CORNELL AND THE "MODEL BARN" . . ... J 9 8 EXPERIMENTS IN SILAGE . . . . 205 LIVESTOCK AND THE MENACE OF TUBER- CULOSIS , , . j '. , . .. . 207 HORTICULTURE . ".. V ,. .212 POULTRY . , . ' . . . 214 EXPERIMENTATION AND INVESTIGATION . 218 THE FEDERAL STATION . . . . 220 THE STATE STATION AT GENEVA . . 227 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION . . . 229 THE RESULTS OF MY EXPERIENCE . . 233 EXPERIENCES WITH NEW YORK STATE OR- GANIZATIONS . .... 247 TRAVELS IN CANADA, TWENTY-THREE STATES, EUROPE AND THE FAR SOUTH ~ . ; ; . 263 SECTION IV CALIFORNIA AND THE WESTERING SUN 1903 . . . . . 295 READJUSTMENTS. SALARY AND SAVINGS . 296 SOILS, PRICES AND PRODUCTS IN THE GREAT FARMING VALLEYS . . . . . 300 THE LAND EXPERT AND HIS SERVICE . 314 CLIMATE, VIEW AND POPULATION . .316 PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND THE NEW WON- DERS ....... 322 POEM AND DEDICATION . . . . 330 STATEMENT BY L. H. BAILEY For thirty years Professor Roberts led the work in agriculture at Cornell University. These were the eventful and triumphant years of 1873 to 1903. They began in doubt and with small things, but they were large with faith. He de- veloped one of the best institutions of its kind. Only ten or eleven years had elapsed since the passage of the Land Grant Act, at which time instruction in agriculture was given a national sanction. A few colleges had made the effort to organize the subject into teaching form and to collect the equipment and develop the farms that were necessary to the new enterprise. Even Michigan, the oldest of the existing North American colleges of agriculture, had been under way only sixteen years. Cornell had given instruc- tion five years. From the first, agriculture had had its appointed place in the institution; but the work was not really established until Professor Roberts came. He came from a farm and with the traditions of farming. He had had experience in the new institution in Iowa. He put himself [i] 2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY to the task bravely, as one sets out to plow and to fit a prairie domain the boundaries of which are unseen and the promise of which is unknown but to the few. For thirty years Professor Roberts and his associates stood for agriculture, always for agri- culture not for natural science under the name of agriculture nor for some pleasant combination of studies that would satisfy the law. In an eastern university, with the great tide of emigra- tion sweeping past him to the West, with decreas- ing values, with old fields, with hindering tradi- tions, he stood, stood like a prophet. It is this courage, this steadfastness in the de- termination to hold the field for agriculture, that grows larger in my estimation as the years go by. I speak of his work in the past tense, for I too look backward ; but I am glad that he is still keen to follow the result of his labors. It was not then a day for erudition, or for high technical scholarship, but a time for clear faith, homely and direct relations with the people, wisdom in giving advice. From the first years that I knew him he was a philosopher and a forecaster, always prac- tical, always driving home the point, always with his feet squarely on the ground. STATEMENT BY L. H. BAILEY 3 He loved the farm; from the rail fence to the back lot, the trees in the pasture, the woodside, the orchard, every animal in stall or field, the high land and the low land, all were his to walk over, to question, to inspect with care, and to improve. It was one of the delights of his teaching to take his " boys " to the farm. He was a master in the practice of observing farm conditions, why the grass was thin here and heavy there, why the weeds came in, why the animals chose the spot on which to lie, how to run the drains, to build a fence, to put up a shed or barn, to paint a building, how to break a horse, how to breed a herd from a common foundation, how to sell a crop, what the weather meant, how to bring an old field back into good condition. He did not teach some small department of farm knowledge as we do in these days, but the whole farm and the farmer and the wife and the children and the hired man ; and he taught it with a quiet and genial philosophy, often quaint and always full of good humor. He was the real teacher of the small group, preferring the out-of-doors and the barns and the herds to the formal laboratories. I have never known anyone to make such good educational use of an entire farm and its equipment. 4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY Yet, with all his knowledge of the fields, Pro- fessor Roberts was singularly sympathetic with every range of science teaching, with every indoor laboratory, with good work in every department of knowledge. Unlike many practical men, he did not insist that all science should have immediate application. He saw the educational result. So he gathered about him many specialists, gave them every facility and equipment he could secure, and left them with great freedom. His hold on the students and on the people of the state was remarkable. His talks and ad- dresses always had practical wisdom combined with vision, he was patient and self-contained un- der criticism, he made friends and he held them. To this day all over New York his students hold him in affection, and old men with broken step inquire of him with tenderness. Professor Roberts retired at seventy, but fortunately retained his connection with Cornell as professor emeritus, a relationship that he still holds. The men of his active generation have mostly passed the years of service. Many of his immediately succeeding colleagues carry still the responsibilities that he left to them, and they are ever mindful of what he would have them to do. OUTLINE OF PROFESSOR ROBERTS' LIFE author of this autobiography, Pro- fessor Isaac Phillips Roberts, was born in Seneca County, New York, July 24, , of native American parents. His father, Aaron Phillips Roberts, emigrated from Harbor- town, New Jersey, to Central New York about 1816 and in 1820 married Elizabeth Burroughs, the daughter of Joseph Burroughs, who had come from the same neighborhood in New Jersey in 1812. Professor Roberts was educated in the dis- trict school of the town of Varick and at the Seneca Falls Academy. He never attended College but in 1875 ne received from the Iowa State Agricultural College the degree of Master of Agriculture. In early manhood he went from East Varick to La Porte, Indiana, where he practised the trade of carpenter until he was able to buy a farm, and taught school during the winters. In 1857 he married at Kingsbury, Indiana, Margaret Jane Marr, the daughter of a prosperous farmer, and in 1862 emigrated with his wife and daughter in a pioneer wagon from Indiana to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where he settled down to farming. [5] 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY In 1869 he was called to the position of Super- intendent of the Farm and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, and shortly afterward was made Professor of Agriculture. In 1873 ne accepted a similar position at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and a little later was made Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Sta- tion. During the thirty years of his service at Cor- nell he wrote voluminously on agricultural subjects, as Associate Editor on the staff of The Country Gentleman, about fourteen hundred short articles chiefly in answer to queries; and four scientific books, i. e., The Fertility of The Land which has gone to several editions and is still in general use as a College textbook; The Farmers' Business Handbook of which a second edition has recently been published; The Farmstead and The Horse. At the age of seventy he retired with the title of Professor Emeritus, receiving an honorary pen- sion from the Carnegie Foundation for his serv- ices; and settled in Palo Alto, California. At the death of his wife in December, 1913, he went to live with his youngest son at Fresno, California, where he spends his winters. In the summer of 1915 he finished this narrative at the home of his daughter in Berkeley, California. HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK WHEN my sons and daughter were little they, like other children, wanted me to tell them stories; and as I had never read much fiction and was not very imaginative, I used to describe how things were made and relate the simple adventures of my limited travels. But best of all they liked the stories of my boyhood and the tales of the neighborhood in which I was born and grew to manhood. The country of my nativity East Varick, Seneca County, New York is situated on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, about opposite the town of Aurora, and when they went there later to visit their relatives it appeared to be an old settled place. But to me it always had the glamour of a pioneer region, for it was a wil- derness when my grandparents came from New Jersey to settle there in 1812, and the tales of their experiences and of my parents' early life had all the picturesqueness of western adventure. Since I retired from my professorship at Cornell University in 1903 and moved to California, my children have repeatedly asked me to write out in [7] 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY detail not only those early recollections but a com- plete autobiography. My daughter, Mary, on one of her visits to the old homestead of the Rob- erts family in New York, found some tattered yel- low papers in a market basket under the business desk belonging to my eldest brother, Ralph. These proved to be the private papers of her great-grand- father, Joseph Burroughs, which had been taken from an old desk in the Burroughs farmhouse and which would have been destroyed, perhaps, but for her interest in them. These documents essays, poems, riddles, et cetera, had no great literary merit but reflected the taste of the time and showed that my grand- father Burroughs, who was a school teacher in his youth and a farmer throughout his adult life, had, at any rate, intellectual aspirations. My daughter, therefore, proposed that I should con- tinue the literary tradition and leave this informal account of my life to my children and grandchil- dren. I realize that this is a somewhat difficult under- taking, as I have no notes or letters of the earlier period to guide me, the few papers I had having been destroyed when my house was burned in 1 863. In old age, however, one is likely to remember the INTRODUCTION 9 scenes of youth better than those of later years; though one is apt also to exaggerate the importance of happenings in youth and to get some things out of focus. As to dates, many of them will not be exact, and I shall often have to say " about " ; but, at any rate, I shall not set down anything in malice nor for the purpose of leading my children and friends to think " What a big man am I ". I began this autobiography in 1904-5 and handed over a lengthy manuscript to my daughter for criticism. But on April 18, 1906, at 5.20 in the morning, a severe earthquake occurred in San Francisco, California, where she was then living. Fires soon afterward broke out and, as the water mains were shattered, the flames spread almost immediately and very rapidly. Mary was living at a Settlement on South Park near Third Street at that time and lost nearly all of her belongings, my manuscript with the rest. In Palo Alto, where I was living, the chimney of our house was destroyed, as were almost all the others in the town; much plastering cracked and fell, a few buildings were thrown out of plumb and two recently constructed concrete-block build- ings were leveled to the ground. The Stanford University buildings suffered most, the damage to io AUTOBIOGRAPHY them being estimated at more than one-half million dollars. The greatest movement or cleavage was along the foothills near which the University buildings stand; and in one place the slip of the earth was at least six feet, as shown by the board fences. But it is not my purpose to give a detailed account of the earthquake and fire, as that can be found elsewhere, in print only to relate so much of it as came within my purview. One more digression I must permit myself be- fore I set out on my personal narrative. If this history of a farm boy should ever come to print, I should not expect that it would interest the liter- ary men of that time, but I should hope that it might give courage to boys on the farms who are often denied opportunity to acquire a thorough education by reason of lack of means and too strenuous physical labor. Theodore Roosevelt has said that he began to get his education young right away after he left college. It will be seen that I began mine at a much earlier date and continued it for three-quarters of a century. The farm boys who may read this should learn from it the lesson of continuous growth, by which even the slowest may arrive at their full capacity. SECTION I BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE (1833-1854) SECTION I BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE I WAS born in the Roberts' farmhouse, on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, July 24, 1833, at sunrise of a fine harvest morning. At that time and for several years subsequently it was the custom of my father as of other heads of families to go to the nearest village, Seneca Falls, some days in advance of harvest and there to trade farm products and to purchase supplies enough to last for as much as six weeks, that is, through harvest. There was always on hand an abundance of pickled pork the great, de-ribbed sides of the hogs killed the fall before, which had been packed edgewise in concentric layers in huge casks and left in the cellar covered with saturated brine to which a little salt petre had been added. But groceries, such as sugar, molasses, spices and a keg of salt mackerel to break the monotony of pork and chicken, were purchased in town; and most important of all items was the keg of whiskey, for few men would work in those days [131 14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY without a regular supply of some kind of spirituous liquors. Although we had an overment of home- grown foods, I have mentioned these purchases to leave on record the fact that the New York pio- neers were most bountifully fed a great factor in the upbuilding of a vigorous people. As to the desirability of whiskey as a beverage, my earliest experience as well as my later ones lead me to an unfavorable opinion; for, on the morning I was born, the hired woman helped her- self to the whiskey and before breakfast time she was unable to perform her duties. This left all the housework for a family consisting of an invalid mother, five children and some half dozen harvest hands, to be done by my eldest sister Caroline (who was only twelve years of age), with such assistance as the other children could render. I imagine, therefore, that I was an inopportune if not an unwelcome visitor, especially as I came for a long stay, with no idea of entertaining my- self. But, in spite of such a beginning, I have thought myself fortunate in being nearly the mid- dle child of parents who were themselves middle children; and I am sure that I was fortunate in being born in the great Empire State and in its most fertile and beautiful section, by the shores of BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE 15 one of its clear and lovely u finger " lakes. For I cannot but think that " Old Cayuga " had a pro- found if unconscious influence in preparing me for an unusually strenuous and difficult life. The house where I was born was on the site of the log house built by my grandfather Burroughs when he emigrated from Harbortown, New Jer- sey, to Central New York, in 1812. At that time he brought with him his family, consisting of a wife and three children, traveling in a prairie- schooner wagon. He had selected a farm there some time before, I think, and had built this log house at any rate, there was a house upon the site when they arrived. A few miles before they reached their place he stopped at a saw-mill and bought a single, wide board which served as their first dining table. This was constructed by boring holes into the logs of the house, and driving pins into them that supported the board. The larger part of the furniture was home-made. Every farmer in those days was provided with a small kit of rough carpenter tools and was trained after the manner of the skilled Dutchman of Pennsyl- vania who claimed that if he had a broad-ax and a narrow ax, an auger, a saw, a pair of compasses and a two-foot rule, he could build a saw-mill. 1 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY As is customary among farmers in a new coun- try, a barn was built before the second or per- manent dwelling house. Just when my grand- father built the permanent residence I cannot say, but it must have been fully ninety years ago; and it must have been a well-built house, for it is still in good condition. The construction was some- what peculiar as compared with present methods. About every three feet along the outer walls of the house, hewn posts which were at least eight by eight inches, were erected and held together about five feet from their tops by great beams upon which the upper floor was laid. The beams having been planed and the boards also, on both sides, it was not by any means an inartistic struc- ture, seen from the inside. The space eight to ten inches between the inner plastered walls and the outside clap-boarded ones, was filled with clay mortar held in place by thin strips of wood which had been split out of straight grained logs. The pioneers had a unique way of mixing mor- tar: they excavated the surface soil, dug up the clay beneath, then threw in straw, and some corn, poured water over all, and turned in a herd of hun- gry swine to do the work of mixing. The eave- troughs of this house were made of a stick of BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE 17 cucumber timber about six by eight inches, hol- lowed out on the inside and moulded on the out- side, and these, when spiked under the eaves, not only served to convey water but formed a very respectable cornice as well. They did efficient serv- ice for more than thirty years. At the time I was born there was also a barn, a long cow stable, a wagon-house, a wood-house, a stone ash-house, a smoke-house and an out-door brick oven. THE FAMILY Such knowledge as I have of my forebears on both sides indicates that they were farmers, almost without exception and chiefly of Welsh and Eng- lish extraction. Some of them fought in the Revo- lution but, so far as I know, without particular dis- tinction. My maternal grandfather, Joseph Bur- roughs, was born in Hunterdon County, New Jer- sey, probably about 1769. He appears to have begun life as a school teacher, for a certificate of his superior qualifications exists in the Roberts fam- ily Bible, owned by Ralph P. Roberts of East Var- ick, New York. The certificate is signed by twelve Dutch school trustees. It is known that the Bur- roughs family emigrated from New Jersey to Cen- tral New York in 1812 and settled in Seneca 1 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY County, on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, at die place now called East Varick. As I have already mentioned, Grandfather Bur- roughs was a voluminous writer, for each of my children now possesses a number of his manu- scripts which were recovered some forty years after his death. The handwriting is good, the grammar nearly faultless and the subjects cover a wide range. He must certainly have had an active mind and literary tastes to find time to write so profusely while he was farming and letting sun- light into beech and maple forests which were then so dense that they would yield from twenty to twenty-five cords of four-foot wood per acre. It appears from the internal evidence of these papers that Joseph Burroughs was a farmer, a local poet and speaker, accustomed to commemo- rate the notable events of the neighborhood and to have these productions published in the Ovid Ga- zette. He was a tax assessor and a school trustee ; a member of the Methodist Church though rather too liberal in his opinions to please the minister; a man widely interested in national affairs, as shown by the varied subjects of his writings; vio- lently opposed to the Free Masons; and if not well educated, at least well read in classical Eng- lish literature, for his verse abounds in classical BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE 19 allusions after the fashion of the period. Pope and Dryden appear to have been his literary models ; and that he was full of sentiment is indi- cated by the great variety of elegiac and love poetry as well as of satire, left to us. He evidently delighted in puzzles, enigmas and difficult arith- metical problems. I know very little about my grandparents on my father's side because they did not emigrate to New York but lived and died in the neighborhood of Hunterdon County, New Jersey. My father, Aaron Phillips Roberts, was born there, October 2 4> X 795 near Harbortown, which is not far from Washington's Crossing on the Delaware River. When he was about twenty-one years of age he walked from Harbortown to East Varick a distance of three hundred miles with his gun on his shoulder. When he married my mother, Eliza- beth Burroughs, in 1820, the young couple went to live in a log cabin on a small farm of about thirty- five acres, upon which tract the village of East Varick now stands. After Grandfather Bur- roughs' death they moved back to the old home- stead farm and worked the two farms together until their eldest daughter, Caroline, married Charles Christopher, when the East Varick tract was given to her. 2O AUTOBIOGRAPHY My father, in early life, I have been told, taught school one winter and singing school for several winters, using the " buckwheat " note-book. When he was about forty years of age he ceased to work regularly on the farm with the hired men and con- tented himself with cultivating an excellent garden, cutting up some of the wood after it had been hauled to the house, and in winter with feeding a portion of the livestock; he generally worked mod- erately in harvest and haying time. He was a great reader and kept himself well informed on the happenings of the day, but he talked little and was rather reserved toward the neighboring farm- ers. The picture of him that rises in my mind is of a dignified country squire in his high, light- colored hat stored with letters and papers, high boots and a " shad-belly " coat. I never knew him to wear either overalls or a blouse when at work these might be suitable for the hired men and the boys, but not for the landowner. It will be seen that he still kept some of the dignity and exclu- sivehess of the old country gentleman and land- owner of England. My mother, Elizabeth Burroughs, was also born near Harbortown, New Jersey, August 16, 1800, and came to East Varick with her parents when they settled there in 1812. It was she who stood BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE 2 1 at the center of the household. It was she who made it possible for me to go forth strong in body and of purpose, to work patiently and bravely for the farmers for science, for justice and for truth. As I look upon the picture of her strong, rugged, placid face, I recall her self-sacrificing life for the good of everyone within the sphere of her influence; and I know that she was a Christian, although she belonged to no church and seldom attended one. Soon after marriage at twenty years of age, her toils began, and as the years passed, griefs and burdens followed on one another's trail; but she bore them all quietly, lovingly, even smilingly. I see her now, the central figure in that numerous, growing family commanding, handsome, but not beautiful, with that large benignity which comes to middle-life and age, from a well-spent, unselfish life. From the youngest to the oldest child, we all looked to her for comfort in trouble, for instruction and advice in all our undertakings, and for appreciation in our successes. After all these years I cannot forgive myself for having wantonly disobeyed her when she forbade me to attend a dance at a tavern of doubtful reputation. This was the more inexcusable since I was allowed to do almost anything that was not positively bad. 22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY Such education as she had she received in the schools of Harbortown, but she never went to school after she was twelve years of age. She was, however, a great reader considering her cares and opportunities had a remarkable mem- ory and was clever at mathematics. She could figure a problem " in her head " more quickly and accurately than any of her sons. She was particu- larly fond of Rasselas, Aesop's Fables in Rhyme, Thompson's Seasons and Scott's Lady of the Lake, the greater part of which she was still able to quote in her old age. She could not sing at all nor could any of her generation of the Burroughs family; but she had an unusual love of poetry and occasionally wrote letters in verse to her children. My mother died at the ripe age of seventy-nine years in the house where she had lived for more than fifty years and in the midst of loving children and grandchildren. She had been " Aunt Betsy " to the whole neighborhood and a friend to every- one who needed anything she could give or could do for them. My father and mother were married in 1820, as I have already said, and the ceremony was per- formed by the Reverend Palmer Roberts, an uncle and an itinerant minister of the Methodist Church, PIONEER SETTLERS IN SENECA COUNTY 23 who was a well-known and eccentric person. The story is told of him that once when he was preach- ing " fire and brimstone " he made a rather pointed personal application to an unregenerate tough in the audience. Some days later the two men met in the roadway, and the man of the pew declared he had been insulted and offered to fight. The minister replied that what he said was true and resorted to argument, but the sinner insisted that he was going to thrash him. The Reverend Rob- erts got down from his horse, took off his coat, say- ing: " Lay there, shadbelly, while I lick this sin- ner 1 " When he had finished the job he put on his coat and rode away singing : " Oh how happy are they who their Savior obey And have laid up their treasure above ! " PIONEER SETTLERS IN SENECA COUNTY My parents had nine children, of whom only one beside myself William H. B. Roberts is now living; and lived during the whole of their married life in the township of East Varick my mother lived more than fifty years in the house which I have described and which still remains. This township of East Varick, which was about eight miles long, extending from Cayuga Lake to 24 AUTOBIOGRAPHY Seneca Lake, was settled almost altogether by emi- grants from New Jersey, of English, Welsh and Irish extraction ; while the next township, Fayette, to the north of us, was filled up with Pennsylvania Dutch people. New Jersey was sandy and at that time not very desirable for farming purposes, and as soon as this lake country became known they flocked westward to it. At the time the Burroughs family left New Jersey the farmers there could no longer raise wheat, and they therefore ate rye bread almost exclusively. In those days wheat could be grown only on new land; yet by 1849, those same Jersey lands had been brought back into wheat by the use of lime and clover. It should be noted in passing that the township, Fayette, whose population was largely " low Dutch/' laid less stress upon education and religion than the settlers of Varick; but they were better farmers. They built the first great red " bank " overshot barns and kept large, fat, short- legged horses from which arose our expression: " Like a Dutch horse, largest when lying down." In the first generation the Dutch built large wooden, brick or stone houses, and the women worked hard in the open fields, especially at har- vest time. But later, when the piano or organ, and PIONEER SETTLERS IN SENECA COUNTY 25 the light top-buggy came in, the girls ceased to work in the fields. Some of these people bore what seemed to us American boys very odd names : Libarger, Poffenbarger, Laudenslaker and Kooney. This last was a strange tribe, nicknamed in the countryside as Black Jake, Slivery Jake, Drunken Jake, Jake's Jake and Bully Jake. As the picture of that lush pioneer life comes back to me I am irresistibly led to philosophize and to compare the earlier with the present time. Then every one was interested in everything that was transpiring and everyone lent a helping hand in all activities. If there were many boys in the family they learned to knit and even to sew, to cook and wash dishes and even to wash soiled clothes. If there were many girls they did the milking, car- ried in the wood and water, picked the small fruits and gathered the vegetables. It was a co-opera- tive, whole-hearted life, each for all and all for each. In the reading and study hours at night there was the same good-natured comradeship whether in cracking nuts or jokes, in extracting cube root or reading what Horace Greeley knew about farming. All that they had the members of the family divided and shared. There were no really poor 26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY save now and then an unfortunate, worthy poor person, and such were cared for from the common store. The cast-off clothing was not handed out to the mendicant poor but made into rag carpet or deftly converted into patchwork quilts. When a sister was to be married all joined in making use- ful things for her housekeeping. John was as solicitous for the welfare of the colt which would be his elder brother's when he reached his ma- jority as he was of what he called his own. In such an atmosphere of mutual helpfulness grew up the people who were later to subdue the wild and windy prairies, to bridge the western rivers and to bind the land together with bands of tempered steel. Not content with reclaiming the prairies, their children moved on to the desert, and beyond into the mountains and foothills, and there spied out the treasure kept for those who had the pluck to find and bring it forth. The more I think of it the more I am persuaded that these pioneers were Christians or near Christians, for of every- thing they had they divided, in a measure, and a part of it they passed along. INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 27 INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN MY BOYHOOD I did not take part in all that I am about to relate in the next paragraphs, but I can assure the reader that I well remember the stories told when I was a lad by my parents as we gathered around the great fire of logs in the living room on winter evenings. In my boyhood the men in harvest time worked from " sun to sun " ; if there chanced to be a field of hay or grain nearby they worked for an hour before breakfast and, on rare occasions, har- vesting was carried on by moonlight. They had to have an " eye-opener " when they arose and another drink just before sitting down to break- fast. The bottle was carried to the field and two or three drinks apiece were taken during the fore- noon by the grown men and one after washing up before dinner, which was served punctually at half- past eleven; but no drink was served after supper. In harvest time, beside the three regular meals of the day, lunch was served at ten o'clock in the field and again at four if the fields were too distant for the men to come to the house for the five o'clock supper. It may seem that the eating and drinking was excessive, but so was the work. On our farm, hasty beer was provided for the boys 28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY and for those who did not care for the stronger drink, and a most acceptable drink it was. The farmers had learned that when only water was drunk, the stomach was in part paralyzed by the large quantities taken to replace the excessive loss of moisture due to the terrible work. This hasty beer was made as follows : a pail of water from the " northeast " corner of the well, a half gill of cider vinegar, one gill of best New Orleans mo- lasses and one to two tablespoons of ginger stirred thoroughly and modified to suit the taste. Nearly every farmhouse was provided with a tin horn from four to six feet long, and there was always a rivalry to see who could blow the horn earliest, best and longest. I have known our Penn- sylvania hired girl to wind that mammoth horn for fifteen minutes at a stretch. It was in reality a challenge to all farm girls within hearing and, as the farms were small and the horn could be heard for more than a mile with favorable wind, and as the fields were filled with harvesters, she had no mean audience. I have before me several pages of an old account book of the year 1818 which was kept by my brother Ralph's wife's father, Mr. Grove, who at one time kept a general merchandise store at Shel- drake Point on Cayuga Lake, twelve miles south INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 29 of our farm. In view of the present agitation con- cerning the cost of living, the prices quoted are interesting. ARTICLES Total Cost in English money Cost in American money per gal., lb., etc. 50 Ibs. nails s 4-3 d $o 41 per lb 15 Ibs. of lo-oz. cheese. One padlock J .. 15 4 8 .25 " I OO 2 bbls. pork 16 16 42 oo " bbl i gal. rum 6 i gal. whiskey irV g 2 25 u u 2 bu. 45-lbs. wheat . . 2 Ibs. tobacco I 13 - K> 6 3.00 " bu. 7; " lb i gal. wine 16 4 oo " eal i lb. tobacco 3 75 " lb. % lb. tea 6 3 oo " lb. 2 pie dishes . . . 2 6 31 " dish 42^ Ibs. of iron I 1C 22 " lb 2 hats * x j I 4. 3 oo each. i lb. rasins 2 50 per lb i bible 8 2 OO ^ gal. rum 2 62 " gal. 383 ft. boards I II 20 oo u M 9f Ibs steel I A, 62 " lb i ft. spinning wheel. . . 28 yds. calico * T i 16 . 3 IQ 9.00 71 " vd 8 Ibs loaf sugar J * 7 I 8 87 " lb 2 Ibs. of shot