Makers of Modern Agriculture Part 1

Makers of Modern Agriculture.

by William Macdonald.

PREFACE

When it is remembered what a prominent part Agriculture plays in the history of all Nations, it does seem strange that so little is known of the lives of those pioneers who have been foremost in the discovery of fundamental principles, improved methods, and labour-saving machines. Perhaps it is that farmers as a whole are not specially fond of reading. This, however, is not to be wondered at, because after a long day's work in the open air it is hard to rivet one's mind on anything more serious than the headlines of a daily newspaper, or the rose-tinted pictures of a rural magazine. Still, it is safe to prophesy that the successful farmer of the future will not only be a hard worker, but also a hard reader. And biography brings before us, in a vivid manner, the onward march of modern Agriculture.

It is also of interest to note how much Agriculture owes to men who could scarcely be called practical farmers. Indeed, the author has been impressed, contrary to common opinion, with the success of the Townsman who takes to farming. But this is really no more surprising than that the simple-hearted farm lad should forsake the Old Homestead for the fascinations of the City, and by reason of his character, courage, and industry, become in a few years the Captain of some great commercial enterprise. There will always be the ceaseless ebb and flow of the human tide between country lane and crowded street. But it is surely our plain duty to do something to make the life of the worker in the field less dull and lonely, and more attractive by the erection of pleasant cottages and the establishment of rural industries: while, at the same time, we try to brighten the life of the toiler in the town by freehold garden lots and sunlit, open s.p.a.ces.

I desire to thank the Editors of the several papers in which these Sketches have appeared for kind permission to republish them in book form: The _Graphic_ (Chapter I), The _Star_, Johannesburg (Chapter II), the _Rand Daily Mail_ (Chapters III and IV), and the _Sunday Post_ (Chapter V). To the _Journal_ of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, I am indebted for the frontispiece (Jethro Tull), as well as for much valuable information.

Royal Agricultural Society of England, 16, Bedford Square, London, _September 1st, 1913._

CHAPTER I

JETHRO TULL : FOUNDER OF THE PRINCIPLES OF DRY-FARMING

_"For the finer land is made by tillage the richer will it become and the more plants will it maintain."_--Jethro Tull.

Eight miles to the north-west of Reading, on a lovely reach of the River Thames, lies the parish town of Basildon, in the County of Berkshire. Here, in the year 1674, was born the man who revolutionized British agriculture and laid the foundations for the "Conquest of the Desert." Yet, strange as it may seem, until the other day Tull's grave was unknown, and even now no monument marks the resting-place of this ill.u.s.trious husbandman. His family was of ancient and honourable lineage, and he was heir to a competent estate. At seventeen he entered his name on the register of St. John's College, Oxford; but he did not proceed to a degree. Two years later he was admitted as a student of Gray's Inn, and was, in due course, called to the Bar. It is probable that Tull studied law not so much with the thought of taking it up seriously as a profession, but simply in order to better fit himself for a political career. Ill-health, however, made him turn his attention to farming. At the age of twenty-five he married a lady of good family, Miss Susanna Smith, of the County of Warwick, and then settled down to farm in Oxfordshire.

His first farm was Howberry, in the parish of Crowmarsh. The land of this farm was fertile and renowned for heavy crops of both wheat and barley. Here Tull lived and toiled for nine years, till at last his health broke down and he was ordered south to the milder climate of France and Italy. So he decided to sell a portion of his Oxfordshire estate and send his family to another farm in Berkshire named "Prosperous," situated in the parish of Shalbourne. After an absence of three years Tull returned to "Prosperous Farm"--a place for ever famous in the annals of agriculture. Here he lived for twenty-six years to the close of his strenuous, chequered career. Of this farm, Tull writes: "Situated on a little chalk on one side and heath on the other, the soil is poor and shallow--generally too light and too shallow to produce a tolerable crop of beans. This farm was made out of the skirts of others; a great part was a sheep down with a full reputation of poverty."

While in Europe Tull took special note of the deep and careful cultivation of the vineyards, where the tillage of the soil between the rows of the grape vines was made to take the place of manuring the land. On his return to England he tried this method at "Prosperous Farm," first with turnips and potatoes, and then with wheat. And by adopting this simple system with some few modifications of his own, he was enabled to grow wheat on the same fields for thirteen years continuously without the use of manure.

It was on his farm of Howberry that Tull invented and perfected his drill in the year 1701. He has told the story of this invention in the pages of his great work. Finding his plans for growing sainfoin[1]

hindered by the distaste of his labourers for his new methods, he resolved to try to "contrive an engine to plant St. Foin more faithfully than such hands would do. For that purpose I examined and compared all the mechanical ideas that ever had entered my imagination, and at last pitched upon a groove, tongue, and spring in the sound-board of the organ. With these, a little altered, and some parts of two other instruments, as foreign to the field as the organ is, added to them, I composed my machine. It was named a drill, because, when farmers used to sow their beans and peas in channels or furrows by hand, they called that action drilling." And thus Tull's drill, taken from the rotary mechanism of his favourite organ, is the pioneer of all modern planters. His first invention was what he termed a _drill-plough_ to sow wheat and turnip seed three rows at a time.

[1] A leguminous plant cultivated for fodder.

It was this invention that led Tull to enunciate his first principle of tillage, namely, _drilling_. And it is the more amazing to reflect that even after this long lapse of time many farmers still persist in broadcasting their seed; for, as a recent authority working on the semi-arid lands of Montana writes: "Sowing broadcast is bad at any time, but in dry-farming it is suicidal." That the use of the drill has everywhere effected an enormous saving of seed is common knowledge; but let us hear what Tull has to say under this head: "Seed (sainfoin) was scarce, dear, and bad, and enough could scarce be got to sow, as was usual, seven bushels[2] to an acre. I examined and thought the matter out, and found the greater part of the seed miscarried, being bad, or too much covered. I observed, and counted, and found when much seed had miscarried the crop was best." Here was his second principle, _reduction of seed_, or, as we now say, "thin-seeding," a practice which has been adopted by the dry-farmers of Utah with remarkable success.

[2] At the present time it is customary to sow from 80-100 lb. of sainfoin seed per acre.

Moreover, Tull was an ardent advocate of the weedless field, and he saw, clearly enough, that dung was a serious menace to clean tillage, as the seeds of troublesome weeds were apt to be scattered far and wide over the farm. This led him to lay down as his third principle--the _absence of weed_. But he certainly never, as is sometimes said, condemned the use of manure. His experiments, however, proved beyond the shadow of doubt that good crops might be grown simply and solely by means of deep and constant tillage. So he says, angrily: "The vulgar in general believe that I carried my farmyard dung and threw it in a river. I have no river near; besides, my neighbours buy dung at a good price; but it is known I neither sell nor waste any dung. Against such lying tongues there is no defence."

Nevertheless, many years after his part was taken by none other than the great scientist of Rothamsted, the late Sir John Lawes, who wrote as follows:--

"Tull was quite an original genius and a century in advance of his time. I consider he has been most unjustly accused of not placing sufficient value upon farmyard manure; he advocated cleanliness, and saw that dung was a great carrier of weeds. To give some clear idea of the value of Tull's advocacy of drill-husbandry and the freedom from weed which can alone be obtained by the use of the drill, I may mention that so far as statistics will allow, I have ascertained the average yield of the wheat crop of the world, and I am able to say that the average yield is less than it is at the present time upon my permanent wheat land, after more than sixty years absolutely without manure. Here we have the result of Tull's three great principles--_drilling, reduction of seed, and absence of weed_. If he were alive now and were writing for the agriculture of the world, he would, I think, be quite justified in saying everything he said in regard to cleanliness and manure."

As a result of his studies, travels, and experiments, Tull published "The New Horse-Hoeing Husbandry: or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation" in the year 1731. The great value of this work is that it is founded not upon mere theory, but upon actual experiments in the field. The fourth edition, which I have beside me, consists of 426 pages, with several plates, and 23 chapters which treat of the following subjects: Of Roots and Leaves; Of Food of Plants; Of Pastures of Plants; Of Dung; Of Tillage; Of Weeds; Of Turnips; Of Wheat; Of s.m.u.ttiness; Of Lucerne; Of Change of Species; Of Change of Individuals; Of Ridges; Old and New Husbandry; Of Ploughs; The Four-Coulter'd Plough; Of the Drill-Boxes; Of the Wheat-Drill: Of the Turnip-Drill; Of the Hoe-Plough; with an appendix concerning the making of the drill and the hoe-plough.

Tull's idea--which was that by tillage soils might be constantly and for ever reinvigorated or renewed--is summed up in his famous epigram, "tillage is manure." He believed that the earth was the true and the sole food of the plant, and, further, that the plant feeds and grows by taking in minute particles of soil. And since these particles are thrown off from the surface of the soil grains, it followed, therefore, that the more finely the soil was divided the more numerous the particles and the more readily the plant would grow. Although Tull's theories were wrong, his practice has been followed by all progressive farmers down to the present time. We now know that plants do not absorb particles of earth, but take in food in solution.

Consequently, the more the particles of soil are broken up and refined, the more plant food the roots can absorb. In this volume, which must be counted an agricultural cla.s.sic, Tull at once takes rank as the foremost preacher of his time of the gospel of deep and perfect tillage. And it is a work which, in the words of his great compeer, Arthur Young, will "unquestionably carry his name to the latest posterity."

The botanical world has recently been illumined by the splendid discovery of the principles of heredity set forth by Gregor Mendel, and the foremost exponent of the new science, Professor Bateson, writes as follows: "We have at last a brilliant method and a solid basis from which to attack these problems, offering an opportunity to the pioneer such as occurs but seldom even in the history of modern science." Cannot we, as agriculturists, say the same with equal truth?

For, to our thinking, Jethro Tull bears the same relation to dry-farming that Mendel does to plant-breeding. For if, on the one hand, his drill-ploughs are the models from which have been derived the marvellous agricultural machines of modern times, then, on the other, his clean husbandry, his seed selection, his deep and constant tillage are the fundamental principles in the great new science of dry-farming. Nor should we forget that both Mendel and Tull enunciated their principles only after long and patient experiment.

The principles which we have adopted in our experiments on the Government Dry-Land Station at Lichtenburg, in the Transvaal and which we propose to follow on all stations hereafter to be established in the Union of South Africa, are seven in number, namely: (1) Deep ploughing; (2) drilling; (3) thin seeding; (4) frequent harrowing; (5) weedless lands; (6) few varieties; and (7) moisture-saving fallows.

And we know full well that the more faithfully we adhere to this scheme the richer shall be our harvests. But, after all, these principles are merely the amplification, nothing more, of those fundamental methods of tillage so plainly set forth, one hundred and eighty-two years ago, by the genius of Jethro Tull.

Tull died in the month of March, in the year 1740, at the age of sixty-six. In speaking of agricultural education we have frequently urged the benefits to be derived from a liberal education, and we like to recall Tull's own words: "I owe my principles and practice originally to my travels, as I owe my drill to my organ." Here indeed, was a man of many parts--a famous agriculturist, an able mechanic, a good musician, and a keen cla.s.sical scholar. His life, strange to say, was one dauntless struggle with disease. For six years he scarce ever left his room, and seldom in that period was he gladdened by so much as a glimpse of his "hundred acres of drilled wheat." So they laid the tired body of the simple-minded English squire under the yew-trees of Basildon in the mellow soil he loved so well. But the bells of the old church of Saint Bartholomew now ring out with a new, glad message, for they tell the toiling husbandmen of all lands to be of good cheer, for the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; while the winds and the waters carry the echo of Tull's name down through the corridors of time.

CHAPTER II

c.o.kE OF NORFOLK: FATTIER OF EXPERIMENTAL FARMS

_"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before Kings; he shall not stand before mean men."_

At the beginning of this article we have quoted a text taken from the Proverbs of Solomon, which we believe can be applied more truthfully to the subject of our paper than to any other name conspicuous in the annuals of agriculture. For he was a man diligent in his business and he stood before Kings.

Thomas William c.o.ke, of Holkham (Holy Home), Earl of Leicester, was the eldest son of Robert Wenman. He was born in the year 1752, and educated at Eton, after which he travelled abroad. On the death of his father, c.o.ke was elected in his place as member of Parliament for the County of Norfolk. He was then in his twenty-second year. He entered the youngest member; his political career extended over a period of fifty-seven years, and he finished up as "Father of the House of Commons." His domestic life was singularly happy--very different from the sad state of his great contemporary Arthur Young. In 1775 he married his cousin, Jane Dutton, by whom he had three daughters. After her death in 1800 he remained a widower for twenty-one years and then at the age of sixty-eight wedded a girl of eighteen, Lady Anne Keppel, by whom he had five sons and one daughter. c.o.ke had the unique experience of being offered a Peerage seven times under six different Prime Ministers, and he was the first commoner raised to the Peerage by Queen Victoria on her accession to the Throne. In this connection an amusing story is told. In the year 1817 c.o.ke was called on to present, at a Levee, a very forcible address to the Prince of Wales, who was then acting as Regent, praying him "to dismiss from his presence and Council those advisers, who, by their conduct, had proved themselves alike enemies to the Throne and the people." The Regent was warned of the proposal. Knowing that c.o.ke valued his position as a Commoner above everything else, he declared with an oath that: "If c.o.ke of Norfolk enters my presence, by G.o.d, I'll knight him." This speech was repeated to c.o.ke. "If he dares," was the rejoinder, "by G.o.d I'll break his sword."

Part of the estate or Holkham was formerly a series of salt marshes on the coast of the North Sea. And when c.o.ke came into his property in 1776--a fateful year in the history of the British Empire the surrounding district was little better than a rabbit-warren, with long stretches of shingle and sand. Soon after c.o.ke's marriage, when his wife remarked that she was going down to Norfolk, the witty old Lady Townshend said, "Then, my dear, all you will see will be one blade of gra.s.s and two rabbits fighting for that." The story of how c.o.ke came to be a practical farmer is told in the third volume of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, published in the year 1842.

The article containing it was written by Earl Spencer, and is of special interest as he had it direct from the lips of Mr. c.o.ke (then Lord Leicester) a short time before his death. When c.o.ke entered into his heritage, he found that five leases were about to expire. These farms were held at a rental of 3s. 6d. an acre; and in the previous leases they had been valued at 1s. 6d. an acre. At that time the agriculture of Norfolk was of the poorest character; and we may judge of the quality of the Holkham land by comparing it with the average rent of 10s. an acre which Arthur Young says prevailed at this time.

c.o.ke sent for the two tenants, Mr. Brett and Mr. Tann, and offered to renew their leases at a slightly higher figure, namely 5s. an acre.

Both refused; and Mr. Brett jeered at the suggestion, saying that the land was not worth even the 1s. 6d. an acre which had originally been paid for it. This curt refusal was enough for a man of c.o.ke's temperament. He forthwith decided to farm the land himself. It was thus that a young man of twenty-two, possessor of a princely fortune, fresh from the salons of Europe, suddenly turned his back on a gay and fashionable world; and stung into action by the laughter of a lazy tenant, took up the management of a sterile farm, raised a parish from poverty to affluence, transformed a desolate county into a cornfield, and left a name renowned in the annals of English agriculture.

In the history of agriculture, the name of c.o.ke is chiefly remembered by those famous gatherings locally known as "c.o.ke's Clippings." These wonderful meetings began in a simple way with the clipping or shearing of sheep, but soon came to embrace the whole realm of the rural industry. As might be imagined, when c.o.ke took over the management of his farms, he had not the slightest knowledge of the science and practice of agriculture. So he called together his neighbours and frankly asked their advice.

They in turn were doubtless glad to meet a young man so keen and so eager to learn. Soon they brought their friends and their relatives, and two years later these little country gatherings had a.s.sumed a more definite character, and were thereupon called "c.o.ke's Clippings." Soon agriculturists from all parts of Great Britain wrote to ask if they might attend. Swiftly and steadily the fame of the "clippings" grew, till presently scientific and other celebrated men from the United States and the Continent travelled to England to take part in these meetings. Year by year they increased in numbers till at last they embraced every nationality, every profession, and every rank in life, from Royalty to the poorest peasant. Holkham had, in fact, become a great experimental farm--a private estate turned by the enterprise of its owner into a public inst.i.tution. Nowadays, we are familiar with State experimental farms, which are visited by thousands of farmers once or twice a year. But a century ago such a thing was unheard of, and c.o.ke may justly be termed the "Father of the Experimental Farm."

At these shearings c.o.ke presented many cups and prizes for the invention of any new agricultural implement, for suggestions with regard to improved systems of cropping, of irrigation, of enriching the soil, and for articles on agricultural subjects--in a word, to every one who contributed to advance any branch whatsoever of the agricultural industry. Moreover, we are told that at a meeting of 1803 sweepstakes were offered for guessing the correct weight of a wether.

The winner was a certain Mr. Money Hill, who guessed the exact weight--130 lbs.; while a butcher named Rett was a good second, and he guessed the weights of four other sheep within one pound. It is said that, one year, there died on the Holkham estate a tenant who had won no less than 800 in prizes at the "clippings." Party politics were carefully excluded from these meetings, and any attempt to introduce a party spirit into the speeches at the annual dinners was at once silenced by c.o.ke. As a politician he was a prominent Whig, but as an agriculturist he sank his politics and opened his doors to men of merit irrespective of their views. Thus he gave Sir John Sinclair a magnificent goblet as a token of his appreciation of Sinclair's "Code of Agriculture," in spite of the fact that Sir John was a strong supporter of the "vile Tories and their viler head, Mr. Pitt." Sir John was pleased beyond measure and remarked, with a true Highland courtesy, that hitherto the most priceless heirloom in his castle had been the drinking cup of Mary Queen of Scots, but henceforth he would look on the goblet of his Whig friend as his greatest treasure.

The last of "c.o.ke's Clippings" took place in the year 1821. It was attended by seven thousand people, and lasted three whole days. There is something very pleasing in the account of this pastoral scene. A stately mansion in a splendid park, with a group of village maidens spinning flax, on a velvet lawn, in the midst of a vast concourse of people drawn from all parts of the earth. Punctually at ten o'clock in the morning, so we read, Miss c.o.ke came on to the lawn, accompanied by her father, and the Duke of Suss.e.x. Then after greetings taken and greetings given, the vast crowd proceeded, some riding, some driving, some walking, to inspect the different farms on the estate. The first day was given up to the study of the inoculated pasture, prize cattle, new implements, sheep-shearing amid farm crops. The second day was devoted to fresh fields, farm schools and cottage gardens. The third day was absorbed in the inspection of the carcases of animals that had been slaughtered, speech-making, and the distribution of prizes. On that day at 3 p.m., seven hundred guests sat down to dinner, a mid-day meal, which, with the speeches and prizes lasted for seven hours! The historian of this period has left us an account of the most popular toasts at these annual banquets, such as "A Fine Fleece and a Fat Carcase," "The Plough and a Good Use of It," while the tribute to c.o.ke's efforts to enclose all waste lands always brought down the house, for it wittily ran: "The Enclosing of all Waists," and c.o.ke's own toast "Live and Let Live," was invariably greeted with tumultuous applause. The two annalists who have left us unimpeachable accounts of those memorable meetings are both agreed that c.o.ke himself was the central figure. Dr. Rigby, in "Holkham and its Agriculture" (1818) writes: "He is everywhere and with everyone.

He solicits enquiry from everyone." At each halt in the ride little knots of people collected round him and listened with absorbed interest to all he said, while for hours he thus sustained the character of leader, lecturer, and host. And the American Amba.s.sador of that day, His Excellency Mr. Richard Rush, writes in "A Residence at the Court of London," "No matter what the subsequent advance of English agriculture or its results, Mr. c.o.ke will ever take honourable rank among the pioneers of the great work. Come what will in the future, the Holkham sheep-shearings' will live in English rural annals. Long will tradition speak of them as uniting improvements in agriculture to an abundant, cordial, and joyous hospitality."

When c.o.ke started to farm in Norfolk the value of rotation was unknown. Then, it was customary to grow three white straw crops in succession followed by broadcast turnips. It was not to be wondered at that soil which consisted mainly of drifting sand and sharp, flinty gravel should soon become worn out. c.o.ke changed this practice and grew only two white crops in succession and then let the land lie in pasture for the next two years. He began to manure heavily; and used rape-cake as a top dressing with marked success. Moreover, he found that the soil of almost the whole district was composed of very light sand and underlaid with a stratum of rich marl. Pits were opened, the marl dug out, and scattered over the surface of the land. This not only promoted fertility, but gave to the soil that solidity which is so essential to the growth of wheat, It was c.o.ke's proud boast that he turned West Norfolk from a rye-growing into a wheat-growing district.

But it took him eleven years before he could get wheat to grow on the poor, sandy soil of his own estate. Nevertheless, before he died, these so-called "rabbit and rye" lands were yielding as much as thirty-two bushels to the acre. His main idea was to stock heavily; more for the sake of manure than for the sake of meat. He pinned his faith on the motto: "Muck is the mother of money." And we are told that he was accustomed to say to his tenants, "If you will keep an extra yard of bullocks, I will build you a yard and sheds free of expense." He was a patient man but he was once heard to remark: "It is difficult to teach anything to adult ignorance. I had to contend with prejudice, an ignorant impatience of change, and a rooted attachment to old methods." He referred to the fact that the farmers still persisted in the old system of sowing cereals broadcast, or else laboriously made holes with a dibbing-iron into which the grain was dropped, while another man followed with a rake and covered up the holes. Thus he used the drill for sixteen years before any of his neighbours could be induced to adopt it; and even when the farmers began at last to see the benefit of this rapid manner of sowing, he estimated that its spread was only a mile each year. By-and-by, however, he noticed that a quaint term for a good crop of barley had come into use at Holkham. His farmers spoke of "hat-barley" for the reason that if a man throws his hat into a crop of barley, the hat rests on the surface if the crop is good, but falls to the ground if the crop is bad. "All sir," said his tenants at length, "is 'hat-barley' since the drill came."