THE WOES OF FARMING. F ROM time immemorial it has been
customary to make fun of "farmers' grumbling." It has become pro- verbial; and, although in recent years the unquestion- able misfortunes of the class have aroused sympathy, only those who have had to do with land can thoroughly enter into the feelings of men who have their living to get from one of the most precarious of avocations. Even with respect to the trouble of falling prices, which other classes of producers and business men have shared with them, farmers have been hit harder than the rest, as one after another branch of their industry has entirely failed to pay, or has become barely remunerative. But it is in being almost entirely at the mercy of the seasons that the farmer is peculiarly tried. From the time of pre- paring the land for the autumn-sown crops to the period of gathering in the latest kind of produce, he is never free from anxiety as to the weather, which is almost always unsuitable to one or another of his crops, and frequently to nearly all. In illustration of this fact, it is only necessary to recall the circumstances of the last four seasons, which, briefly described, have consisted of three droughts and a flood. In 1893, after one of the most prolonged and severe of droughts during the spring and summer, which literally burnt up the pastures, and re- duced the production of all crops but potatoes and turnips below the standard, wet weather set in with the harvest most inopportunely, but passed away without doing much damage. The hay crop from permanent meadow-land was not much more than half an average one, and the scarcity of feed for stock was so great that forced sales were numerous, while there was an approach to a milk famine for a time. In the following year magnificent crops were to a great extent spoilt by one of the wettest of harvests, and the rainy weather lasted all through the autumn sowing season, so that about one-fourth of the land intended for wheat could not be sown with that cereal. In 1895, after a drought nearly as prolonged and severe as that of 1893, the first half of the harvest was rainy, and a large proportion of the corn was badly injured and reduced in value. As in 1893, the drought reduced the yield of all but two crops below the average, the excep- tions being potatoes and hops ; but the reduction was not as great as in the earlier season, and pastures were not burnt as badly. At one period of the present season farmers' hopes were high, CZ nearly all their corn crops were sown in fair time, in spite of a wet March, which, by way of compensation, it was supposed, promised a good bay crop. But from the end of that month till the second week of June, there was an almost absolute drought in most parts of the country, which rendered the yield of hay almost as small as it was in 1893. Occa- sional storms of rain, many of them local, saved the crops from threatened destruction ; but hot and dry weather returned after the middle of July and lasted till the end of the second week in August. By that time the corn crops, all very light except wheat, had been for the most part secured in fine condition in the southern half of England and the earliest districts of Scotland and Ireland ; but wet weather then set in, lasting through September, in which month rain fell nearly every day. Large proportions of the corn crops were exposed to this flood of rain in the northern counties of England, a con- siderable quantity in the Midlands, and a smaller acreage in the east, west, and south ; while in Scotland fully two- thirds of the corn were exposed, and more or less in all but three or four counties of Ireland. The damage done is enormous, the grain being stained and sprouted, while the straw has been turned black and almost rotten in some cases. Most of the wheat was secured ; but large proportions of the barley and oat crops have been rendered unmarketable, some of the corn being so grown and matted together that it cannot even be threshed. At the end of last week there was still a considerable acreage of corn out, some of it having been exposed to the repeated rains for six weeks. The promising potato crop, too, has suffered, disease and supertuberation being more or less prevalent in all parts of the Kingdom, but worst in Ireland. Great quantities of second crops of hay, by means of which farmers hoped to supplement the scanty produce of the first cut, moreover, have been quite spoilt ; some of the bops have been stained ; and heavy gales have stripped fruit-trees in many districts.
After all, the theory of compensation applies to this latest catastrophe, as it did not to the results of the earlier seasons referred to. As in the two preceding dry summers. the drought was less severe in the late districts of England and Ireland and in Scotland as a whole, than in the early parts of the Kingdom, and the crops were correspondingly better. This season, where the corn was lightest, it has been secured for the most part in perfect condition, and will sell all the better for the damage done where the crops are heavy or fair ; whereas in the earlier years the late districts had the best of it from first to last. But either from drought or flood, or both, nearly all farmer.= in the Kingdom have been helpless sufferers this season. Imagination may afford to those who have not had experience a faint idea of the feelings of the farmer, whose fortune is in his fields and pastures, as, day after day, he sees his grass being scorched, his corn dwindling, and his live-stock half-starving in the burning sunshine, or his crops sprouting and rotting in the fields while the pitiless rain pours down day after day, and he is helpless to rescue them. It is this helplessness which renders the woes of the farmer peculiarly distressing. If he could be up and doing for even a slight alleviation of his misfortune, his mind would be diverted from his loss to some extent. But he is at the mercy of the elements, and is, perforce, an idle spectator of his own ruin. We do not mean to say that the provident, prompt, and energetic farmer is as utterly stranded in periods of unfavourable weather as the improvident, dilatory, and inert one. On the contrary, the results of drought may be averted to some extent, as by irrigating pastures where facilities are available, and by growing drought- resisting forage crops for live-stock ; while the disasters of a wet haytime or harvest are least where all possible efforts are made to secure crops with the greatest expedi- tion while the sun shines, or to stook the corn in the best manner for throwing off rain, restoring any sheaves which afterwards fall to their proper position. But where all is done that can be done the damage from severe drought or heavy flood must always be serious, as it is for the most part unprevcntable. This season, for example, where the rain set in with the cutting of the corn, and never held off long enough to allow of its drying for a month or six weeks, the farmer and his men might almost as well have been at sea as on the land, for all that they could do to save the crops from damage. A little bit of individual testimony is worth giving as an example of how keenly this is some- times realised by men who are not blessed with a stolidity which turns the edge of trouble. A farmer who gave up his farm, while some portion of his capital remained, entered into partnership with a business man in London, who proved an utter rogue. The dishonesty of the man soon became apparent to the ex-countryman, and he was in fear of utter ruin for months before the collapse occurred. Yet he declared afterwards that his mental trouble throughout the period of suspense was as nothing compared with what he had passed through during his farming career.
The farmer in other countries is no whit better off. In Russia, this year, some of the crops were rendered extremely deficient generally, and destroyed in some districts, by un- favourable weather ; and a Consular Report states that the cultivators of the soil as a body are hopelessly in- debted to the State. In parts of Austria-Hungary and other Continental countries in which the harvest is as late as our own the same damage to corn and potatoes by wet weather as has occurred here is reported. Nearly all crops in the United States, and some in Canada, are greatly below the mark in consequence of drought or insect depredations, or both combined. Clouds of locusts have settled over Argentina, and the weather has been unfavourable to the crops. India is threatened with famine through drought having prevented sowing to a great extent, and injured the crops sown for two seasons in succession. Australia, too, has had a second season of severe drought, which has caused a stock famine, in which thousands of cattle and millions of sheep have perished ; while the crops at the date of the latest mail reports were in a very serious condition. If our farmers suffer frequently from the prolonged deterioration of their crops while in growth or being harvested, they are not liable to such sudden and sweeping catastrophes as the hailstorm which destroyed completely about one-tenth of the Manitoba wheat crop this season ; to the frosts on the verge of harvest which have as often as not done more or less damage to the corn crops of that Canadian province; to the blizzards which frequently occur in the United States, to the serious destruction of live-stock, vegetation, and buildings ; to the wholesale and fatal ravages of insects, common in America and some other countries ; or to the hot winds which wither the ripening crops in Russia and Australia. In all parts of the world Nature mingles her punishments with her bounties in such marvellous variety and with such distressing frequency that the hasty and irreverent exclamation of a troubled farmer, made in our hearing, seemed almost excusable. " There may be a special Providence for other people," he said, " but I am quite sure there is none for the farmer." But, in spite of all the woes of farming, it is a wonderfully attrac- tive pursuit to the masses of mankind. In Great Britain a man will hardly leave it before he is utterly ruined, though his capital may be dwindling year after year ; in Ireland the peasant clings to his wretched plot of bog or nearly barren mountain-land ; on the Continent of Europe the peasant-proprietor lives a life of penury in cheerful sacrifice to the soil which he almost worships ; and in America millions of free men chain themselves to a life of drudgery, and condemn their wives to even more incessant and life-wasting toil, for the sake of bare existence on the land. Perhaps necessity rather than choice keeps the millions of the peasantry of Russia, India, and many of the countries of Asia and Africa toiling on the land for a meagre subsistence at the best, with occasional starvation thrown in. But whatever allowances are made as to the unwilling captives of the soil, and in spite of all that is said of the tendency of the rural population to migrate to the towns, full consideration will show that the attractions of the land are at the bottom of the agricultural depression affecting all parts of the world more or less. Freedom, independence, fresh air, and occasional sport are so con- genial to the majority of mankind that they outweigh the troubles and disadvantages of farming.
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