USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 32
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 32
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wealth, in the councils of war and defence. Robert U. Johnson, long the editor of the Century Magazine, was born in Indiana, and Mr. Roswell-Smith went from the State to found that periodical. Another editor who honors the field of Eastern journalism is George Cary Eggleston, also from the Hoosier State. Charles Denby gave the most valuable years of his life to the service of the nation as its representative during those trying years in the Orient. John W. Foster, though living in Washington, keeps closely in sympathy with his native State, and no man of the present day has rendered more brilliant service to his country in diplomacy. George B. Williams of Washington, now interested in international shipping contracts, went from Indiana to formulate Japan's revenue system. The work of Harvey W. Wiley in the United States Agricultural Department, for pure foods and the advance of science, reflects great credit on the Hoosier State, of which he is a native. Judge Landis of the Federal Court is a member of a large family who have served Indiana. International re- cognition of Charles R. Henderson as an authority on measures for social betterment, in charities and corrections and kindred works, is also a recognition of an Indiana man, and the State's interest in those matters. Professor John W. Coulter's pre-eminence in botanical research means a credit mark to an Indiana family, as well as the work in the same line done within the State by Dean Stanley Coulter. Pro- fessor Charles Barnes has distinguished himself in the same science, and the Director of Dresden's great orchestra is Clark of Indiana.
The membership of the "Indiana Society of Chicago" shows that the Hoosier State has contributed
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judges, authors, poets, artists, bankers, journalists, and engineers of note and signal ability, to Chicago's commercial and intellectual life. Those of Hoosier birth in that city are too many to enumerate; but they are known to all, as now occupying places of honor and great responsibility in that busy centre of the nation.
The list of past and living Hoosiers who have added to the history of achievement throughout the Re- public might be lengthened indefinitely. But enough have been mentioned to emphasize the statement that the character of the population of the State, how- ever plain and simple, is not the "common people." Indiana produces men and women of marked ability, who, whether they go out from her borders to do their life-work or remain identified with the history of the State, show that they are more than the "average American."
In writing of his exhaustive and analytical search into the origin of the term Hoosier, Mr. Dunn very truly says: "The essential point is, that Indiana and her people had nothing whatever to do with its origin or significance. It was applied to us in raillery, and our only connection with it is that we have borne it meekly for some three score years and ten, and have made it widely recognized as a badge of honor, rather than a term of reproach." In the language of Mr. Maurice Thompson, "Say Hoosier, if you like, but say it with admiration and pride."
CHAPTER XX
AGRICULTURE IN INDIANA
I N the very opening of the history of Indiana, the French settlers did little in agriculture beyond cultivating, in communistic fashion, the gardens and fields about the forts, under the encouragement of the priests. The French trader opposed agricultural settlements, because they destroyed his trade in peltries, and the Jesuit was sometimes hostile to them, because they dispersed the Indians and removed his mission field. The French Government gave no land grants, at many of the posts, hence there was no permanency of settlements as where some system of land-holding prevailed. When the American settlers came out from the Eastern coast, it was to make homes and cultivate the land.
Marquis Duquesne himself had shown the Indians, before he left in 1754, the difference there would be to them between the English and French colo- nization: reminded them that the Frenchman was not a menace to their game areas, that they could hunt to the very walls of the French forts, and that those forts were placed conveniently for trading- stations with the natives; that the inhabitants were only a garrison; and they had their lands as tenants of the crown. On the other hand, the English
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moved the frontier forward, only to possess the land. They felled the forests, planted the ground, and the game disappeared. Congregations and communities were established at every favorable landing where the products of the soil might be shipped to the markets of the world. They grew steadily into independent States, instead of remaining dependent colonies that had to be fed from over seas. The magnificent forests that were found growing over a large part of Indiana indicated an exceedingly rich soil, more productive than any State east of it, and from the time of the first clearings it has been pre-eminently an agricultural State, there being but few acres of its twenty-three million that cannot be cultivated.
"After a personal inspection of a great part of the United States, I have seen no portion of the Union more beautiful in appearance or one combining so many advantages as that which is watered by the Wabash River," wrote Henry L. Ellsworth when he was Land Commissioner at Washington, and he took up great tracts of land in the valley of that river. In 1843, in his message Governor Whitcomb said: "Our position, soil, and climate point to that branch of labor devoted to agriculture as our chief reliance for lasting wealth and prosperity. This calling should rank first in respectability as it is unquestionably the first in importance to the State."
An old settler, speaking of Indiana's geographical position as a great factor in her future prosperity, said that "lying directly across the track, for all time, of all the great artificial improvements that can ever be made connecting the East with the Pacific, over the valley of the Mississippi, coupled with the fact that she is so highly favored in climate, soil, mineral,
The Entrance to School Garden, Delphi, Indiana.
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wood, water, and rock, we can see that Indiana com- bines all of the elements of a great and growing State."
Into this territory, where the aborigines had raised their crops by making holes in the ground with bone hoes and dropping in a seed, to come up without further cultivation than scratching the soil a little, the first farmers came. They began their primitive culture by cutting down or girdling the forest trees, and cultivated their first crops between the stumps. Generally they paid for their lands by selling the pelts of the wild animals which they had shot in the woods. Often the ploughshare was the only piece of iron in their equipment. The rest of that implement was made by the farmer himself from white oak; as also was made his harrow, both timbers and teeth. All of the farmer's implements were well pinned to- gether with hickory pins, through holes that were burned out, for he had no auger. In winter rudely fashioned sleds, hauled by plodding oxen, carried the farmer's crops and timber to market. Wooden rakes were universal, and pitch-forks were made from the forked boughs of a tree, or the antlers of an elk. The cabin of the settler, the mortar for grinding grain, the cider press, the tannery, the implements of toil, were all made at home, and without nails, screws, or bolts.
Comfortable homes, great granaries, and barns have long ago displaced these primitive surroundings. It is interesting to recount the various movements and influences that have contributed to the rapid progress of the farming community. First, because earliest and most continuous, must be accounted the rural churches and Sabbath-schools, with the social as- sembling of all ages for worship and friendly inter-
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course, as the greatest means of the development in Indiana farm life.
Next to the church gatherings, the earliest stimulus the farmer had to do better things, materially, was the organization of the State and county fairs. There had been several successful county fairs held in Indiana before the first State fair occurred in 1852, and Gov- ernor Wright urged the people to organize a State institution for the promotion of friendly rivalry in agriculture. It was a new idea in the Western States and the first exhibition was a success. The records show that the first Indiana State fair lasted through three days, each one of which was marked by the balmy sunshine of Indian summer; over thirty thou- sand Indiana people were on the fair grounds dur- ing the three days, and this first State fair was a successful one for the times, in a financial way, in exhibits, and in attendance. It called together town and country men from remote sections of the State. People started from home days before the fair opened, some driving horses, and others being content with the slow pace of oxen that drew their wagons. It was the first general exhibit of the products of the labor and skill of the people. The stock-raisers of Indiana sent their sleekest cattle to the fair in 1852, as they have done every year since. They also sent their largest and finest horses, the fattest from their herds, the best products from the field and orchard, and the best from their looms.
There were plowing contests between farmer boys, who drove either horses or oxen. There were exhib- its of many new inventions in farm machinery, very helpful in informing the farmer. The new art of taking daguerreotypes claimed many patrons. Staves
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cut by machinery collected a crowd of sight-seers. Homespun fabrics and spinning-wheels were shown side by side with the recently introduced invention called sewing-machines, which enlisted the greatest curiosity, because of their novelty. There were half a dozen railroads in operation in the State by that time, and they carried in thousands of people to the fair who had never been on a train before! The plank roads passed animals free of toll, and the roads were lined with exhibits going into town. One newspaper contained the editorial announcement that it was sure the State fair would infuse into the farmers a just pride in the utility and greatness of their pursuits, and "that a laudable ambition to have the mantel decorated with a silver cup will actuate all, and, thus feeling and acting, who can calculate the ultimate result?"
In the earlier years of the State fair, energy was directed to building up public interest in the enter- prise, and with this purpose in view the fair was held at various points in the State. The chief reason for this was to bring it within reach of all the people, and to maintain the interest that the first fair had won. The other reason was, the State Board of Ag- riculture was in its infancy; its treasury had nothing behind it but the faith and good-will of the people. It had no permanent home. The State Board borrowed from county fair associations the use of their grounds in these earlier years. In 1853, the second State fair was held, at Lafayette. Horace Greeley delivered the speech, which was made one of the chief attractions. The next season the State fair was held at Madison. Until 1868, the fair was migratory. In 1861, the strife of war cast a gloom over its career. Soldiers
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were camping on the grounds, and no exhibition could be held that year. The misfortunes of the war followed the fair through the years of 1862 and 1863, when the institution lost money. In 1868, the fair came back to Indianapolis, to wander no more from county to county. The attendance has increased since its salad days with the growth of the population, until now fully 164,000 people are in attendance.
The social side of all of the agricultural fairs cannot be overlooked in estimating the benefits derived from them. The people come up to their county exhibitions, renew old friendships, and make new acquaintances, which is a most wholesome variation of the daily treadmill of their isolated existence. The people have been loyal to these local institutions too; one prosperous farmer's wife, who was going for a tour of Europe, said, "I shall not go until after our county fair; my husband and I have not missed a session since its organization." Lectures and demonstrations in agriculture and domestic science are generally held on the grounds in connection with the exhibition. These advantages contribute to their educational value.
The fairs have always been the largest means of making known improvements in farm machinery, which has manifolded the labors of each man on the farm. To appreciate the lightening of toil by invention applied to farm implements, we only need to recall that until 1840 grain was mown with scythe and sickle; and great bands of reapers were necessary to gather the golden crop. These troops of men went from the southern to the northern part of the State, garnering the harvest as it ripened in each district. After the grain-cradle was introduced, a man could reap the great area of two acres a day! In those
Children Crating their Tomato Crop in the School Garden at Delphi, Indiana.
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times the grain was threshed out with a flail or tramped out by horses and winnowed through sieves. The first crude threshing-machines had a capacity of thirty to sixty bushels of wheat a day, and the chaff must be separated by men using wooden rakes and forks in the choking dust. Afterwards they must drop the grain from an elevation, at the same time dexterously fanning it with a tow sheet. Lieutenant Governor Cumback used to be fond of telling that when his father bought an improvement for this labor, in the form of a fanning-mill, he was taken to task by a devout neighbor, who maintained that, as it was a "wind contrary to nature," it must be displeasing to the Almighty. Soon there were travelling threshers, with six horses and twice as many men, who astonished the agricultural world by threshing two hundred bushels a day! Later steam machines appeared and two thousand bushels were threshed out, and the dust blown far from the sweltering laborers. The improvement in farm machinery for other purposes was equally startling. Indiana now stands near the head of the line in the manufacture of these implements and vehicles.
The introduction of machinery was the greatest factor in the increase of the comforts of living and the efficiency of labor on the farm, in Indiana, as elsewhere. When we remember the primitive im- plements of the past, we think with patience of the boys who left the farm. The future before the Hoosier on the farm is the ideal life, where the work is to be done by the combined use of brains and machines, when electricity from the streams will perform the toil, and science will have added to the productiveness of the acres.
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The first Governor of the infant commonwealth, Jonathan Jennings, was a farmer and deserves the honor of being the man who introduced clover into the State. He imported the seed from England in 1832, paying thirty-five dollars a bushel for it.
In 1862, President Lincoln gave his approval to the bills creating the Agricultural Commission, and to the land grant act, establishing colleges of agriculture in all the States, which Buchanan had vetoed two sessions before. This grant was the largest ever made to education, and was the foundation of industrial ed- ucation in America, which is to revolutionize methods of higher instruction. In Indiana, the results of this act, and a further one of the State Legislature taking advantage of it, was the establishment of Purdue University at Lafayette in 1874. The value of the agricultural department of this school to the State is only limited by the appropriations made by the Legislature for its further upbuilding. Other States should not be allowed to outstrip it, either in the initiative of its management or in its equipment, if Indiana is to keep pace with its neighbors on every side. Indiana's agricultural university gave instruc- tion to more than one hundred thousand people of the State in 1907. This multitude was reached through the regular college course, the short course in agricul- ture, the Farmers' Institutes, and that popular form of instruction of sending out corn and fruit excursion trains through the counties. These trains carry valuable exhibits of superior products of the soil, and specimens showing the ravages made by insects. Lecturers from the staff of the university accompany the train, and instruct the assembled farmers.
Besides the agricultural fairs, and the establishment
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of a great university as the fountain head of all pro- gressive work, the Farmers' Institute, promoted by that university, and conducted by its staff of teachers, is one of the most broadening influences in the rural life of Indiana. It is recognized that the Farmers' Institute is to the adult farmer what the agricultural school is to his son. Through the papers read at these meetings, and the discussions which ensue, the farmer receives the benefit of years of study and investigation by scientific men. Another very practical mission is performed by the university in connection with its " short course in agriculture," which is held in January each year; that is, the assembling of the Corn School, and other agricultural organizations, within the very walls of the university. These sessions are attended by enthusiastic farmers, numbering over a thousand, who are intent on learning better methods. Scores of their wives and daughters are enrolled in the courses of domestic science, poultry-raising, dairy work, and horticulture. The faculty of the university, speakers from the Agricultural Department at Wash- ington, and practical growers and agriculturists, give the lectures. Competent judges pass upon the prizes to be awarded to youths, who are entered for practice in judging exhibits. These annual meetings at the college have double the value of conventions held elsewhere; for the members receive definite scientific instruction. They also have the advantage of practical demonstrations in the raising of stock, grain, and fruits, coupled with strict judging of the products displayed. The close ex- amination of 2025 exhibits of the best seed that can be raised in Indiana, and 133 different exhibits of fruits as well as prize cattle and dairy products, were among the practical object lessons of the 1908 session.
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The grange, as now organized and conducted, is one of the important steps for improvement instituted by the agricultural classes. Being on a co-operative and educational basis, and non-political, it can work for the betterment of conditions in rural life along so many lines that its influence in the future should be vast. In Indiana its membership is growing steadily. As it is a "family club" and holds county, State, and national meetings, it necessarily follows that when the grange chooses to address itself to vital questions it can sway a multitude of opinions, and be a great force in the commonwealth.
Agricultural and live-stock journals, and kindred departments in the regular newspapers, have been a most potent influence in the history of Indiana farm life. They bring inspiration, information, and en- tertainment into the farmer's home. The ability and knowledge engaged in this editorial work is com- mensurate with the wide influence of their pages. Perhaps the periodicals of no other trade or calling have more attractive pages than those published for country life. Not only the useful reading matter is valuable, but the illustrations are surpassingly beauti- ful. To be a progressive farmer in this day, without the agricultural and live-stock periodicals, is not to be imagined. The State publications and all other journals of merit have their hosts of subscribers in rural Indiana. It requires but a glance over the papers on the table of a representative farmer to estimate their usefulness to him.
Indiana is showing the results of all these influences in the increased productiveness of her areas, the extension of good roads, the comfort of the farm- houses, and barns for cattle, and the improvement
Prize Crop Raised by a Member of the Boys' Corn Club in Laporte County, Indiana.
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in schools. These all demonstrate the progressive spirit of the agricultural communities. At the National Corn Show of 1907 out of eight thousand exhibits, shown from all of the corn-growing States, those from Indiana were declared superior. A single first-prize ear of Johnson County White Dent corn, raised by a gentleman from Franklin, Indiana, sold for $250.00. Twenty-five other prizes were taken by Indiana farmers, which shows what intelligent growers can do, with this soil and climate. Indiana also won "every blue ribbon" in some classes of horses and cattle at the live-stock shows of the same year. That there is large room for further improvement must be admitted, when the claim is conceded that the present population may increase fourfold and still get its living from the soil that is now in cultivation; that the resources of the country, in unimproved areas, will admit an increase of population twice that amount with scientific, intensive farming!
Probably nothing of more importance has been inaugurated on Hoosier soil than the movement to introduce elementary study of agriculture into the free public schools, to which we have alluded in the chapter on Education. In time this work should revolutionize farm life in Indiana. It gives an ideal education for the average farmer's sons and daughters, and turns the attention of town youths toward the country. In speaking upon this important innovation, a lecturer from the university said truly: "The study of agriculture in country schools, in most of its ram- ifications, is of perennial and universal interest. It sustains a vital relation to the life and well-being of the individual, and of the community. The subject is not only interesting and inspiring, but it is also
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definitely practical. It has to do with the problem of bread and butter. It deals with the here and now." Another reason for the study of elementary agri- culture, which applies particularly to the rural schools, is the right of the country children to a school training which will specially prepare them for life on the farm. The great majority of these children do not attend school beyond the eighth grade. If special instruction in the elements of agriculture is denied them before that grade is finished they must be greatly handicapped in their efforts to win success and become useful citizens. An agricultural high school, supported by a group of counties, which would give a sound in- dustrial training for the boys and girls who are not to go further, with the agricultural university main- tained as the pinnacle of the educational scheme, is the intention of Indiana educators. In a most interesting paper, Professor Hays has outlined the plan of the high school as suited to the agricultural districts, in which he says that the course covers three winters of six months each, leaving the student on the home farm during the six crop months, where the industrial, business, and social position is retained
unbroken. With this arrangement eighty-two per cent. of the graduates remain in agriculture, seventy per cent. actually return to the farm! In the history of agricultural Indiana this is a most important step in advance. Evidence of the wonderful interest in- spired by these elementary lessons in agriculture in the district schools is given in the displays of re- sults already achieved by the pupils. Many counties have organized clubs for the study of the problems of tillage, soil, and seeds. Any pupil, boy or girl, who is regularly enrolled in the school and doing
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creditable work may enter the contest. Seed is distributed to them after preliminary instructions have been given; and bulletins on corn-growing, is- sued by the university, are distributed to the mem- bers. Prizes are offered, and experienced judges are provided when the crop is exhibited. During the season of growth of the little plantations, the pupils are expected to keep notes of the kind of soil, amount of moisture, cultivation, drainage, and yield from their individual plot. When the date arrives for the display of the products it is made a gala time. In some districts there is a procession, headed by a band of music. Often there is a corn dinner, cooked and served by the girls of the club. Some organizations have given trolley excursions to visit Purdue University, where they view other exhibits.
Most of the boys of the clubs have been reported as very successful growers. Some of the plots of ground planted by them have produced at the rate of a hundred bushels to the acre. When sold for seed the prize packages in many places sold for $2.00, and none of the corn brought in to the contest sold for less than $2.00 a bushel.
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