USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 50
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Bad housing is partly responsible for the existence of the state's prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, and hospitals for the insane and
469
OUR CHANGING POPULATION
feeble-minded. The state had long had a Department of Correction, an outgrowth of the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities established in 1867. In 1925, when by constitutional amendment the government of the state was reorganized and the State Commission on Correction was established and made a part of the Department of Cor- rection, there were 15,819 persons-14,610 males and 1,209 females-de- tained in the prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, and county jails of the state. At that time there were outside of New York City four state prisons Auburn, Clinton, Great Meadow, Sing Sing-one state reformatory for men and two for women, one Institution for Defective Delinquents, five county penitentiaries, and approximately sixty county jails. New York City penal and correctional institutions held a little under one-third of the total 15,819 noted above.
Twenty-five years later the total number of persons had increased to 21,630; of these, 4,802 were in New York City institutions, and the num- ber of females in the entire state was 1,186. In other words, in this quar- ter of a century, the number of males showed a marked increase. By 1950 four new state prisons had been added to the four older institutions. These were Attica in Wyoming County, Greenhaven in Dutchess, Wall- kill in Ulster, and Westfield State Farm for Women at Bedford Hills, Westchester.
The treatment of female miscreants prior to 1925 left much to be desired. The movement for a woman's reformatory in the state, though begun in the first decades of the nineteenth century, made slow headway. Prior to 1837, females convicted of a felony in the western part of the state were all herded into one suffocating room in the attic of Auburn prison. Those convicted in the eastern part were nominally sentenced to Sing Sing. Because there were no accommodations for them at this institution, they were kept at Bellevue Penitentiary in New York City under the jurisdiction of the almshouse department. There was no segre- gation on the basis of age or sex or degree of offense. The only attempt at classification was the separation of black and white convicts. In 1837 a separate building for women was built within the walls of Sing Sing to which all women felons from all parts of the state were to be sent.
This arrangement was far from satisfactory. With passing years cham- pions of reform, especially Josephine Shaw Lowell, for years a member of the Board of Charities, increasingly called attention to the disgraceful situation. To this end during the 1870's and 1880's Mrs. Lowell con- ducted a series of investigations into the conditions of women in the state's correctional and charitable institutions. Her campaign, which was given impetus by the opening of the Elmira Reformatory for men in 1876, finally resulted in the passage of a state act establishing a House of Refuge for women in Hudson in 1887. In 1894 the Western House of Refuge at Albion (now Albion State Training School) was completed,
470
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
and female offenders from the western part of the state were sent there. The Westfield State Farm at Bedford was established ten years later. In 1933 female felons from the official woman's prison established at Auburn in 1894 were transferred to Bedford and the Auburn plant was dis- mantled.
All of the prisons except Sing Sing operate farms, and all except Wall- kill are engaged in industrial production. Attica has extensive textile and sheet metal industries, Auburn, the state's oldest prison, manufac- tures wooden office furniture and sheet metal products. The state's automobile license plates are produced there. Great Meadow at Com- stock in Washington County is the smallest of the state's prisons. Its industries are comparatively small and include a chair shop, stone quarry, and tobacco processing plant. Sing Sing, whose population turnover is far greater than that of the other prisons, has a large printing depart- ment and extensive shops for the manufacture of sheet metal products, knit goods, shoes, mattresses, brushes, and brooms. Wallkill, in Ulster County, specializes in academic and vocational training. It has no indus- tries. At Westfield State Farm, the only prison for women, the one industry is the manufacture of sleeping attire, dresses, sheets, and pillow- cases.
The Department of Correction operates two institutions exclusively for mental defective delinquents. The Institution for Male Defective Delinquents is located at Napanoch, Ulster County; the Albion State Training School at Albion, Orleans County, houses women. The Wood- burne Institution for Mental Delinquents at Woodburne, Sullivan County, houses both mental defective delinquents and dull normals of borderline intelligence. There are also a number of private institutions for the mentally defective and subnormal.
New York City operates approximately one hundred institutions and places of detention subject to inspection by the State Commission of Correction. Largest of these is the penitentiary on Riker's Island. This is the reception and classification center of the Department of Correc- tion for all male prisoners sentenced to the penitentiary and workhouse and for all reformatory parole violators. Here the department's medical center receives practically all the medical and mental cases and self- committed drug addicts. An extensive academic and vocational program is also provided. The fifty police station jails of the city are under the jurisdiction of the Police Department.
Although the causes of mental disease are usually multiple, bad hous- ing is frequently an indirect cause. Moreover, mental disease is more characteristic of urban than of rural areas. This helps to account for the location in or near the state's large cities of the majority of the public and private hospitals for the mentally ill.
471
OUR CHANGING POPULATION
Prior to 1858 there was considerable uncertainty in New York as to the status of the criminal insane. Criminal and noncriminal insane were permitted to mingle indiscriminately in the poorhouses and prisons of the state. In 1858, however, the legislature provided for a state asylum for the criminal insane within the grounds of Auburn Prison. Opened in 1859, the first of its kind in the United States, it received all the crimi- nal insane of the state until 1892, when a similar institution was opened at Matteawan.
In 1843 a state lunatic asylum was opened at Utica. This historic asylum was authorized to receive acute cases of insanity from county poorhouses. Here the inmates were subjected to more humane treatment than they had ever known at the poorhouses. A few years earlier (1839) the first county hospital for the insane in the state was erected by New York County on Blackwell's Island. This institution received insane paupers formerly cared for at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
No provision for state care of chronic cases of insanity was made until 1865. Following the exposure of the intolerable evils of such diseases by the great reformer, Dorothea L. Dix, the legislature somewhat tardily authorized a sweeping investigation under the direction of Dr. Sylvester D. Willard in 1864. Acting upon the recommendations contained in the report submitted by Dr. Willard, the legislature in 1865 provided for "the establishment of a state hospital for the chronic insane, and for the better care of the insane poor to be known as the Willard Asylum for the Insane." All chronic insane in poorhouses and pauper cases pro- nounced incurable at the Utica asylum were to be transferred to the new institution. With the passage of the State Care Act in 1890 the confine- ment of any insane person in poorhouses was forbidden. Henceforth all the insane in New York, with specified exceptions, were wards of the state.
Meanwhile (1875), thanks largely to the efforts of the Children's Aid Society founded in New York City in 1853, the legislature passed the Child Care Act forbidding the retention of children between the ages of two and sixteen in almshouses. The passage of this measure was an- other historic landmark in the history of the care of needy and sick of the state.
With the growth in population, state attention for the care and treat- ment of the mentally ill, mental defectives, and epileptics has mounted. By 1954 the state maintained twenty-seven institutions, including eight- een hospitals, six schools for the mental defectives, a colony of epileptics, the New York State Psychiatric Institute for research and teaching, and the Syracuse Psychopathic Hospital for observation and temporary treat- ment of mental patients. The state also operated three aftercare clinics for patients following release from hospitals.
Chapter 35
Agriculture in the Empire State
The greatest business in the world is agriculture. It gives us everything we eat except salt and sea food and everything we wear except watches and jewelry. Everybody in America, then,-country men and city men alike-must be interested in agriculture, for we can never have a full measure of prosperity in America until the greatest business in America is itself prosperous .- E. PARMELEE PRENTICE, 1935
IN THE minds of many people, New York State means bustling cities, the hum of a seemingly limitless number of factories, giant mercantile establishments, and a state gridironed with power lines, superhighways, and air lanes. The state is also a checkerboard of farms. In this chapter we shall be concerned primarily with the transformation of the agri- cultural enterprise of the state resulting from the application of ma- chinery, agricultural education, and specialization. The dairy industry, farm labor, credit, and markets will also be emphasized. Finally, brief attention will be given to the effects of the revolution in methods upon farm life and outlook.
The land area of New York is 30,675,000 acres, and more than seven- teen million acres of this is in farms. About one-half of this farmland, less than in 1865, is devoted to crops; the rest is used for pasture.
In the period between 1870 and 1950 many factors lowered the state's agricultural rating in comparison with the other states of the Union. In 1870 New York led all other states in the number of farms and value of farm property and was second only to Illinois in improved acreage, and its farm population of over one million constituted the largest single occupational group and nearly one-fourth of the total population of the state. By 1950 its farm population had decreased to less than 15 per cent of the total population. Nevertheless, in 1954 New York ranked
472
473
AGRICULTURE IN THE EMPIRE STATE
thirteenth among the states in value of its farm products, which sold for $816,854,000 as against $874,702,000 in 1953, when it ranked tenth. It led all others in the cash value of its ducks, cabbage, fluid milk, and onions; was second in value of its snap beans, apples, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, maple products, hay, buckwheat, grapes, cherries, and beets; third in value of its eggs, carrots, potatoes, and lettuce; and fourth in pears and celery. Its buckwheat crop of some two million bushels was about one-third of the total national product. It had virtually a monopoly of the production of buckwheat honey. Though its leader- ship as an agricultural state has declined, its place in the nation's agriculture is still a most important one.
During the ninety years between the end of the Civil War and the 1950's, New York State agriculture has been transformed by a series of developments that revolutionized not only the methods of farm production and the position of the farmer in the economy of state and nation but the whole of rural life as well. Improved transportation, the opening up of new agricultural areas outside the state, the over-all growth in population, the expansion of industrial enterprise and the growth of urbanization, the increasing use of machinery and dependence on scientific experimentation in such matters as insect control and plant diseases, and the changing character of the farmers' market have virtually destroyed the farmer as an economic individualist. The New York State farmer has increasingly become a specialist who is compelled to operate within the framework of a complex modern economy over which he has little control.
Like those of the other northeastern states, the farmers of New York State were keenly aware from early times of the competition arising from new agricultural areas both at home and abroad. Prior to World War I this competition was occasioned for the most part by improved trans- portation and the expansion of population westward. From 1860 to 1910 the number of farms in the United States increased from approximately 2,000,000 to more than 6,000,000; the area of land under cultivation rose from 160,000,000 acres to 347,000,000 acres; and the number of farm families rose by more than 1,500,000 to a total of 6,123,610. Although every section of the country contributed to the expansion of American agriculture during these years, it was in the new lands of the Middle and Far West that the more significant advances occurred and from which New York State farmers experienced greatest competition. Espe- cially was this true of those self-sustaining general farmers who annually marketed their surplus wheat and livestock as a means of acquiring ready funds for taxes and other necessary cash outlays. Because of this competition and in order to make ends meet, they were virtually com- pelled to abandon general farming and to become agricultural specialists
474
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
either on a large or small scale. Even as a specialist the New York farmer, though he might possess a fertile Genesee Valley farm admirably adapted for the production of wheat, could not compete with the prairie wheatgrower of the upper Mississippi Valley, where conditions are almost ideal for wheat farming. That the competition of the West early became important is evident when we observe that among the ten leading wheat-producing states in 1860 New York ranked seventh and that it thereafter fell below the first ten. By the end of the century New York, though growing rapidly in population, was producing a diminishing amount of wheat and other cereal breadstuffs.
Most of the more important types of farm machinery after 1865 were manufactured in prairie-state factories-although most of the harvesting machinery used by New York State farmers prior to 1900 was manufactured by New York State firms; Adriance-Platt (Pough- keepsie), Walter A. Wood (Hoosick Falls), Osborne (Auburn), and Massey-Harris ( Batavia).
After 1910 the New York farmer, though a specialist-dairy, fruit, truck, or poultry-continued to face regional competition. The New York milk producer had to compete with producers in New England, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the Bullard Orchards of Saratoga County with Washington, Virginia, and Michigan applegrowers; and the potato farmer of Long Island and central New York with the potatogrower of Maine and Idaho. Some New York farmers also faced increasing foreign competition; in this respect, however, they were far more fortunate than those American farmers who specialized in cotton, grains, wool, and meat products and, therefore, faced competition from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Argentina and other parts of the world.
Depending upon soil, climate, topography, consumer demand, and the farmer's own interest, background, and inclination, there is con- siderable agricultural regionalism within the state. If any one agri- cultural enterprise may be thought of as being statewide it is the production of fluid milk and cream. With the exception of the Suffolk- Nassau and the New York metropolitan areas, almost every part of the state is engaged to a greater or lesser degree in the production of dairy products. Counties especially notable for milk production are Chau- tauqua, Cattaraugus, Chenango, Delaware, Dutchess, Herkimer, Jeffer- son, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga, Otsego, Schoharie, St. Lawrence, and Washington. Good grazing lands, proximity of a huge consumer market, and adequate transportation facilities are the principal factors which make dairying the state's leading agricultural activity in terms of capital investment, number of persons employed, and total value of products sold.
475
AGRICULTURE IN THE EMPIRE STATE
Ranking next to dairy commodities in value of products sold are poultry and eggs. Although most farmers keep sufficient hens to provide eggs for the household and an occasional chicken dinner, the poultry industry is concentrated within Cayuga, Chautauqua, Chenango, Co- lumbia, Cortland (turkeys), Delaware, Dutchess, Niagara, Onondaga, Orange, Oswego, Otsego, Suffolk (a large producer of ducks), Sul- livan, Ulster, and Wayne counties. Nearly all of these counties have sizable cities within their boundaries or are near large urban centers. A number are in the vicinity of vacation and recreation areas, such as the Catskills.
Table 11. The top five dairy states in milk production (billion pounds).
1945-49
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
Dairy income as % of total farm cash income
Wisconsin
14.8
15.0
15.3
15.9
16.3
16.5
50%
New York
8.1
8.8
8.9
9.3
9.5
9.8
45.6
Minnesota
8.4
7.9
8.1
8.6
8.6
8.8
18.5
California
5.8
6.0
6.1
6.6
7.0
7.2
12.0
Pennsylvania
5.3
5.6
5.7
5.9
6.1
6.4
34.2
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Similarly, the majority of the vegetable and truck farms are concen- trated in areas close to populous centers, although soil and climate are also responsible for the location of farms in particular areas. The muck- lands of the central part of the state make it especially suitable for onions and celery. The sandy loam of Long Island accounts in some measure for the fact that Suffolk ranks third among the counties of the nation in potato yield and that it devotes extensive acreage to truck farming, with cauliflower, fresh beans, sweet corn, and cabbage as leading products. The soils and climatic conditions of parts of Saratoga and Washington counties help explain the heavy annual production of melons. Soil and climate enable Chautauqua County to rank among the seven leading grapegrowing counties in the nation. The Chautauqua grape belt, the Finger Lake region, and Ulster County give the state a high place on the list of grape-producing states of the nation.
As a commercial producer of apples New York has long been in the forefront. Here again soil and nearness to large bodies of water are determining factors; the thriving orchards of the state are located along the shores of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, the Finger Lakes, Lake Cham- plain, and the slopes of the Hudson Valley. Wayne and Ulster counties
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
rank first and second among the apple producers of the state. Orleans, Monroe, Columbia, and Dutchess counties have sizable orchards.
Several of these same counties, especially Ulster, have long been well known for their production of pears, peaches, plums, cherries, currants, and berries. In recent years a few counties have experimented with new crops. Greene, Ulster, and Columbia, for example, have developed a thriving mushroom industry. Areas with large dairy herds to feed have emphasized forage crops. Onondaga, Madison, and Cayuga counties rank high nationally in the production of alfalfa.
One of the most interesting farm enterprises in the state is the maple- sugar and syrup industry, producing in an average season about 1,000,000 gallons of syrup and 500,000 pounds of sugar. St. Lawrence County in the north, Cattaraugus, Allegany, and Broome counties in the southern tier, Cortland and Chenango counties in the central part of the state, and Wyoming in the west, are the principal producers. A large proportion of the New York products are exported to Vermont, where they are resold as "Vermont" maple syrup or sugar.
Table 12. Principal crops of New York.
Crop
1955
1954
Average 1944-53
Corn (bu.)
30,573,000
29,568,000
26,326,000
Wheat “
10,048,000
10,065,000
10,352,000
Oats
30,299,000
26,888,000
25,692,000
Barley “
3,162,000
2,560,000
2,535,000
All hay (tons)
5,078,000
5,512,000
5,735,000
Dry beans (100 lbs.)
1,314,000
1,396,000
1,452,000
Soy beans (bu. bags)
84,000
88,000
102,000
Potatoes
29,760,000
31,560,000
33,341,000
Apples
17,100,000
16,900,000
14,046,000
Peaches
66
1,300,000
1,010,000
1,337,000
Pears
495,000
285,000
548,000
Grapes (tons)
75,400
94,000
58,920
Cherries
38,200
30,100
22,100
Maple sugar (lbs.)
37,000
24,000
51,000
Maple syrup (gals.)
461,000
378,000
448,000
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture. This table does not include the yields of the numerous truck farms or farm gardens, nor does it indicate a number of other items of farm income. In 1954, for example, cattle sold for meat were valued at $53,175,000 and the sale of milk and other dairy products amounted to $369,998,000. In addition, federal government payment to farmers of the state in 1954 were $3,753,- 000, compared with $4,949,000 in 1953.
The value of livestock and poultry on farms of the state as of January 1, 1955, was $337,214,000. This included 2,356,000 cattle, 14,887,000 chickens, 73,000 horses, 1,000 mules, 160,000 hogs and 153,000 sheep. Turkeys raised in 1954 totaled 942,000.
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AGRICULTURE IN THE EMPIRE STATE
The state is also known for its horticulture, which has long been fostered by the State Horticultural Society. Numerous nurseries produce an abun- dance of ornamental trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. Newark in Wayne County is the center of one of the best-known nursery areas in the state. Rhinebeck in northern Dutchess County, nationally famous for its production of violets, is the exclusive grower east of the Mississippi. The finest anemones in the United States are also grown in this area.
In New York, as elsewhere in the nation, no one factor has con- tributed more significantly to the revolutionizing of farm methods and farm life than the introduction of improved machines and new tech- niques. As a consequence, agriculture has been transformed during the last one hundred years from a simple pioneer and largely self-sufficient occupation into a modern business organized on a scientific, commercial basis.
Roughly, four phases of this development are discernible: (1) begin- nings, prior to 1860; (2) the general displacement of men by horses for motive power which occurred between 1860 and 1910; (3) the sub- stitution of mechanical power for horsepower following World War I; and (4) continuing mechanization and application of science to every phase of agriculture.
Before 1840 the New York State farmer used simple inexpensive tools, many of which were manufactured at home. His land was turned with heavy and clumsy plows drawn by horses and oxen raised on the farm. The seed was sown by hand and harrowed into the ground by home- built drags or bundles of bushes. The grain was cut by a sickle or a cradle, bound by hand, and threshed with wooden flails. The grain was separated from the chaff by a manually operated fanning mill. The corn crop was planted, hoed, cut, and husked by hand. If the farmer happened to be a producer of dairy products all the work was by hand; the cows were milked by hand, the milk was strained by hand into pans, the cream was skimmed by hand and churned and worked into butter, which, in turn, was packed into jars or wooden containers by hand. The cows were fed and their stables cleaned by hand. The tasks were endless, the hours of labor long, and the opportunity for profit limited.
After 1860, with the invention of improved plows, harrows, and cultivators and of harvesting machinery, especially the mower, reaper, and thresher, the situation improved markedly. But the hours of toil were still long and the tasks that still had to be performed by hand were numerous. On the dairy farms the old methods still prevailed at the close of the century. During the 1880's and 1890's New York farm boys arose at four A.M. to help with the milking. To the end of their lives they never forgot the cold winter mornings when, half awake, they shivered into their clothes in an unheated house and made their way
478
A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
to the cow stable, where they warmed their hands on the cow's udders before beginning to milk. Before the coming of the hay loader, all of the hay, though cut and raked with machines, was harvested by hand. It was pitched on the hayrack and off the rack into the haymows and mowed back by hand. The corn was still cut and husked by hand. During the years 1860 to 1910 there was, at best, a gradual and partial transition from the tool to the machine.
Farm mechanization in the state came into its heyday during the first half of the twentieth century when mechanical power displaced the horse and new machines and gadgets were substituted for the older ways. Space forbids more than brief mention of a few of the machines which have so profoundly changed agricultural production in all parts of the state. Any list would include the tractor, milking ma- chine, cream separator, refrigerator, grain combine, hay baler, corn- husker, side delivery rake, silo-filling machinery, the high-power sprayer, mechanical washing machine, manure loader and spreader, and the numerous electrically operated gadgets which have replaced hand tools.
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