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Greeley foresaw tractors
The holiday season usually
provides some leisure time to
catch up on agricultural reading.
As usual, this season I had a
growing pile of farm magazines
and other agricultural publications
to look through. One book that I
found particularly interesting was
titled simply “Harvest.” It’s a
collection of agricultural writings
going back as far as Christopher
Columbus and including several
presidents, some noted poets and
historians, and some of the con
temporary agricultural writers of
the 1900’s. The book copyrighted in
1964 was written by Wheeler
MacMillan, former editor of Farm
Journal magazine.
I highly recommend “Harvest”
as a treasure of agricultural
history, wit and folklore. Quoted in
the book are such notables as
Captain John Smith, Benjamin
Franklin, George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham
Lincoln.
Today I take the libery of quoting
from one noted writer who more
than 100 years ago put his finger on
one of the great needs of future
agriculture.
Horace Greeley is perhaps best
known for having told someone to
go west. That one quote is about all
anybody really knows about him.
In fact, he was the founder and
editor of the New York Tribune
and at one time tried to earn a
living from his own farm at
Chappaqua, New York. In 1871
Greeley published a book on
agriculture titled “What I Know
About Farming.” Irr it, he
described the need for a machine
which has turned out to be today’s
tractor. Here’s what he said:
“What our farmers need is
not a steam plow as a
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specialty but a locomotive
that can travel with facility
not only one common wagon
roads but across even
freshly plowed fields without
embarrassment and prove
as docile to its manager’s
touch as an average span of
horses. Such a locomotive
should not cost more than
$5OO not weigh more than a
ton when laden with fuel and
water for a half hour’s
steady work. It should be so
contrived that it may be
hitched in a minute to a
plow, a harrow, a wagon or
cart, or saw or grist mill, a
mower or reaper, a thresher
or stalk cutter, a stump or
rock puller, and made useful
in pumping and draining
operations, digging a cellar
or laying up a wall as also in
ditching and trenching. We
may have to wait some years
yet for a servant so dex
terous and docile, yet I feel
sure that our children will
enjoy and appreciate his
handiwork.”
That phrase was written more
than 100 years ago and, as Greeley
predicted, his children-perhaps
his grandchildren-did enjoy such a
machine-the modern tractor
which by the early 30’s achieved
the dexterity and docileness
demanded by the 1870’s editor.
Published in the book “Harvest”
is also a farm creed written by
Henry Ward Beecher and
published in “Country Life
Reader” in 1916. Perhaps it will
provide inspiration for some of
today’s farmers as they face
another year.
A Farm Creed
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We believe that soil likes to
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We believe in large crops
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We believe in going to the
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therefore in deep plowing
and enough of it all the better
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We believe that every
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We believe in good fences,
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mhouses, good stock, good
orchards and children
enough to gather the fruit.
We believe m a clean
kitchen, a neat wife in it, a
spinning wheel, a clean
cupboard, a clean dairy and
a clean conscience.
Why would anybody want to be a
migrant farm worker? I ask
myself that question every time I
read one of those touching stories
about the plight of the migrant
worker. If the pay is so bad and the
work so miserable, why do they do
it? Why leave home and family and
the security of a familiar en
vironment for the uncertainties of
migrant work?
The stories I read tell of hard
ship, deprivation, substandard
living conditions, back-breathing
work, abusive crew chiefs, un
sympathetic farmers, and average
incomes well below the poverty
level. Put that on a recruitment
poster and how many join up. But
something makes them join. For
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some reason, whole families will
climb into an old car somewhere in
south Texas and follow the harvest
through Kansas, lowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, the Dakotas, and
Washington. They follow the
harvest wherever it takes them-to
the sweet com and snap bean fields
of Wisconsin, the apple trees of
Oregon, the berry patches of New
Jersey, and the processing plants
that go along with fruit and
vegetable farming.
The stories tell of squalor, of
back-breaking stoop labor, of little
children who must work from
dawn til dark, just to put food on
the table. And always it seems the
migrant worker gets less than he
deserves. He is often robbed of his
wages, charged outrageous prices
for commodities he must have, and
is shunned in the communities
where he visits. And still I find
myself asking, why does he do it?
Migrants have been around for
more than a century. They’ve
harvested crops in virtually every
state, and certainly they’ve made
their contribution to American
agriculture. Before the turn of the
century, migrant workers had
grown in importance in areas
where large amounts of seasonal
labor were required. Farmers
were concentrating on specialty
crops that required huge amounts
of labor for short periods of time.
Crops like wheat, sugar beets, and
a long list of vegetables were being
grown in concentrated areas. And
workers who followed the harvest
were the salvation of these far
mers. These early migrants
followed the harvest, in groups and
as individuals, at a time when all
farm work was back-breaking
stoop labor. In the early days,
migrants came from a variety of
ethnic backgrounds, and many of
them graduated out of the
migratory status into full-fledged
farmers.
The need for migrant workers
grew steadily during the first half
of the twentieth century. In fact,
during World War II when there
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was a serious labor shortage on
American farms, a concentrated
recruitment effort went on. The
Emergency Farm Labor Program
was established in 1943 and con
tinued until 1947. Through it
thousands of foreign farm workers
came into this country.
Along with this, technology was
working to reduce the need for
hand labor. Machines were being
invented that did many of the
backbreaking jobs. A farmer could
sit on a tractor seat and harvest a
crop in a few days that had
previously required weeks of stoop
labor by dozens of migrants.
Cotton pickers, combines, tomato
harvesters, and chemicals that
eliminated the need for thinning,
weeding, and other hand work
were available.
America’s migrant worker
population peaked about 1950 with
a million workers. It’s been a
steady decline ever since to the
point where there are probably no
more than 200,000 today. That’s out
of a total of less than two million
farm workers. There are still
areas where migrants are im
portant, but not like they used to
be. Here in the mid-Atlantic region
there are a few crews each year
who work the vegetable crops, but
that’s not a very large acreage and
it doesn’t require very many of
them.
Farmers who used to grow
vegetables and use migrant
workers have switched to the
relatively easy production of corn
and soybeans-work that can be
done by one man from the seat of a
tractor or a combine. There are no
labor camp worries, no health
department regulations, no social
pressures. So fewer migrants
make the trip to Delaware,
Maryland, Pennsylvania and some
other states that used to employ
thousands of migrant workers
every year.
No doubt this trend will continue
as new machines are developed
and new crop varieties released
that will withstand the rigors of
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