Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

by Stephen Hines

  People painstakingly raise shade trees on the bare prairies, but where we already had the shade and beauty of the forest we have carelessly failed to preserve it and now in many places must carefully rebuild what we have destroyed, taking years to replace what was removed in only a few days.

  While a drive along a shady roadway is much more pleasant than one on a hot and dusty road, still pleasure and beauty are not all that are to be considered. There is also a utility side to the idea of trees along the way, for they help to keep the roadbed in good condition by retaining moisture and preventing washing away of the soil.

  In many parts of Europe the fruit and nut trees along the roads bring enough of an income to keep up the roads so that the people pay no road tax. Rather staggering, that idea of self-supporting roads, to a people who spend so much for poor roads as we do. Another curious little fact in regard to trees in Europe is that any one in Switzerland who cuts down a forest tree must plant another to take its place.

  Of course, in the clearing of our great new country we could not do that, but we have destroyed trees when it was not necessary, seemingly thru a spirit of wantonness, and so we have a double task before us, to plant trees where they did not grow and to replant in some places where they have been cut down. The work has been well started in some prairie states. Six thousand trees have been set out by the United States balloon school at Fort Omaha.

  J. Sterling Morton was United States Secretary of Agriculture under President Cleveland but he will be longer remembered by the work he did on the State Board of Agriculture in Nebraska when he set aside the tenth of April as Arbor Day to be observed then and thereafter by the planting of trees. Since that first Arbor Day in 1872, 300 million trees have been set out in Nebraska.

  People of wooded districts can save themselves much trouble and expense later by preserving the trees along the roadways for I am sure the Lincoln Highway will set the fashion which all our country’s roads will follow in time.

  The Farm Home (12)

  November 5, 1919

  “Isn’t it awful, the prices we have to pay for things!” exclaimed my neighbor to me. “Just look at these shoes! I paid $10 for them! Something ought to be done to these profiteers; poor people can’t afford to live any more.”

  My neighbor’s shoes were new, of course, and the heels were extremely high, too high to be really good style, but she seemed very proud of them and proud also in a rather shamefaced way that she had paid $10 for them.

  “You need not have paid so much,” I replied, “thru all these high prices for shoes I never have paid quite $4 for a pair and my shoes always have been correct in style and have worn well.”

  “Oh!” said my neighbor. “It’s too much trouble to hunt bargains and my foot is not easily fitted. Besides you order your shoes, do you not?”

  “Sometimes,” I answered, “but never when I think the home retailer is asking only a fair profit. When I think he is profiteering, I protect myself without calling on the government at Washington. I do for myself at least as much as I can.”

  I think most of us imagined our war troubles were over when the fighting had stopped and Germany had signed the peace terms, in the famous Hall of Mirrors, but we are sadly disappointed. The whole world is in a state of unrest and disturbance caused by the after effects of the war and chief among the disturbing causes is the high cost of everything one has to buy.

  In articles on the subject and in political speeches the consumer is put in a separate and distinct class by himself as opposed to the producer. Farmers think of themselves as consumers and condemn the producers and profiteers when they have to buy the high priced farm implements and other necessities of life, while the people who make these goods or sell them say that farmers are profiteering producers. And so we go on wasting our time in recriminations, just as congress, as a body, has spent its time in investigation of things that are past and gone and in oratory about the mistakes some one made, instead of citizens and congress both bending every thought and energy to the future, to the rebuilding of what has been destroyed by war and the reforming of the abuses still existing.

  There are problems that should be handled for us all collectively but as in so many other things of our national life, it is also a matter for each of us to attend to. If each one of a crowd acting independently does the same things, it produces a mass action that is powerful, and we can handle this problem of high costs for ourselves much better than we have been doing if we try.

  We all did seemingly impossible things in conserving and producing during the war. We can still do them until the effects of the war have passed away so far as prices are concerned, and it is as much a patriotic duty. Experts in economics say that the reason for the high prices is that the rate of production has not kept up with the inflation of currency due to war conditions and that the remedy for the evils of high prices is increased production.

  According to them, prices and production work like a see-saw—when one goes up the other goes down. When money is scarce and products plentiful, a little money buys a large amount of products, but when money is plentiful and products scarce, then it takes a great deal of money to buy a small amount of products, which is where we are today.

  Just now to help arrive at that balance we must practice economy and produce as much as possible. This is where every one of us can help. For instance, if by caring for a garment we can make that garment last twice as long, we have not only saved money but helped to increase the volume of products by leaving them on the market. It acts in the same way as the schoolboy described in his essay on pins—“Pins has saved many lives by not swallering of ’em.”

  Another way to help ourselves thru the pinch of these unsettled times and to make it harder for the actual profiteers is to buy as carefully and economically as possible even tho it is some trouble, for it is surely worth the effort.

  The Farm Home (13)

  November 20, 1919

  “One gains a lot by going out into the world, by traveling and living in different places,” Rose said to me one day, “but one loses a great deal, too. After all I’m not sure but the loss is greater than the gain.”

  “Just how do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean this,” said Rose. “The best anyone can get out of this world is happiness and contentment and people here in the country seem so happy and contented, so different from the restless people of the cities who are out in the rush of things.”

  So after all there are compensations. Tho we do not have the advantages of travel, we stay-at-homes may acquire a culture of the heart which is almost impossible in the rush and roar of cities.

  I think there are always compensations. The trouble is we do not recognize them. We usually are so busily longing for things we can’t have that we overlook what we have in their place that is even more worth while. Sometimes we realize our happiness only by comparison after we have lost it. It really appears to be true that,

  To appreciate Heaven well

  A man must have some 15 minutes of Hell.

  Talking with another friend from the city gave me still more of an understanding of this difference between country and city.

  “My friends in town always are going somewhere. They never are quiet a minute if they can help it,” he said. “Always they are looking for something to pass the time away quickly as tho they were afraid to be left by themselves. The other evening one of the fellows was all broken up because there was nothing doing. ‘There isn’t a thing on for tonight,’ he said. ‘Not a thing!’ He seemed to think it was something terrible that there was nothing special on hand for excitement and he couldn’t bear to think of spending a quiet evening at home.”

  What an uncomfortable condition to be in—depending altogether on things outside of one’s self for happiness and a false happiness at that, for the true must come from within.

  If we are such bad company that we can’t live with ourselves, something is seriously wrong and should be attended to, for sooner
or later we shall have to face ourselves alone.

  There seems to be a madness in the cities, a frenzy in the struggling crowds. A friend writes me of New York, “I like it and I hate it. There’s something you’ve got to love, it’s so big—a people hurrying everywhere, all trying to live and be someone or something—and then when you see the poverty and hatefulness, the uselessness of it all, you wonder why people live here at all. It does not seem possible that there are any peaceful farms on earth.”

  And so, more than ever, I am thankful for the peacefulness and comparative isolation of country life. This is a happiness which we ought to realize and enjoy.

  We who live in the quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those who are keeping up with the crowd where there is always something “on for tonight,” and who have become so accustomed to crowds that they are dependent upon them for comfort.

  In thine own cheerful spirit live,

  Nor seek the calm that others give;

  For thou, thyself, alone must stand

  Not held upright by other’s hand.7

  The Farm Home (14)

  December 5, 1919

  “The Price of Sugar May Go to 20 Cents!” was the headline that stared me in the face from the page of the paper I had picked up. “Unless Congress continues the sugar equalization board during 1920, the price of Cuban sugar to the American consumer will increase to 15 or 20 cents a pound, Attorney General Palmer says,” I read on.

  If the sugar equalization board is any curb on the sugar trust, it is devoutly to be hoped that the board will be continued, especially when one remembers that five persons are said to control the sugar output of the world.

  Congress was asked by the President to continue the war boards in operation until conditions had adjusted themselves to peace, but with that spirit of hostility to the executive branch of the government, Congress immediately discontinued some of the most important. Among these was the labor board, which I know from private, inside information was working desperately to be in a position to handle the labor situation. The labor troubles from which we are all suffering may not be the direct result of dismissing the board, but it is plain that all the help that could have been had in the trouble would not have been too much.

  Since the removal of the restrictions on the packers and stopping of the investigation, the price of cattle and hogs has gone down and down. The situation reminds me of a flock of crows descending upon a corn field when the man with the gun is gone.

  Also, it makes me wonder if the man was right who said to me, “They may talk about the Bolsheviki and the I. W. W. and imprison and deport them, but we have the same thing, in only a little different form, in high places and we won’t have peace until we settle them both.”

  Is one any more a lawbreaker, I wonder, for trying to take that to which he is not entitled from those above him in the social scale than is the one who takes more than he is entitled to from those below him?

  Some public speakers and some editorials are saying that the farmers hold the balance of power and will have to take control and handle the situation, but farmers are only partly organized and it will be difficult for them to handle anything so few understand, besides they are all divided among political parties and stand by their particular party regardless, even tho by so doing they lower the price of hogs.

  I heard some farmers talking politics not long ago and they violently disagreed, passing insults on one another’s popular leaders. In this they were following the lead of their daily papers.

  I wonder again—I wonder if that correspondent of the Saturday Evening Post was right when she said, “The world has simply lost its kindliness and its courtesy. It has lost its ability to gauge the fitness of things.”

  Some writers are expressing the hope that the women will “clean house” in politics, sweeping out from both parties those who only clutter up the place, and hinder the day’s work.

  I think the idea of a woman’s party, a political division on sex lines, is distasteful to women, especially farm women. It seems as if the time had come to reason together instead of dividing into another antagonistic group.

  If farm women would make a study of just where and how the action or refusal to act, of Congress affects their interests, talking it over in the home, and then vote accordingly, I am sure that they would find themselves and their men folks supporting the same candidates and defeating, for reelection, those who have sold them out to any interests whatever, whether the higher or the lower Bolsheviki.

  If women, with their entrance into a free discussion of politics, can do away with the “hot air” and insults, with “making the Eagle scream,” and

  “twisting the Lion’s tail,” and “shaking the bloody shirt,” and all the rest of the smoke screen, bringing politics into the open air of sane, sensible discussion—a discussion of facts and conditions, not personal discussions of leaders, they will have rendered the country a great service.

  The Farm Home (15)

  December 20, 1919

  Peace upon earth the angel sang,

  Good will unto men the chorus rang.

  But that was many, many years ago at the first Christmas time. We could scarcely hear the angels, if they were singing now, for the clamor of disputing and wrangling which is going on where peace is supposed to be.

  In our own country there is a gathering into groups with mutterings and threats of violence, with some bloodshed and danger of more and there is still war and threat of war over most of the world. This would be bad enough at any time, but just now when we are thinking of all the blessed meanings of Christmas tide, it becomes much more terrible.

  A great deal is said and written about natural, national boundaries and learned discussions of racial antagonisms as causes of the restlessness and ill temper of the nations and there are investigations and commissions and inquiries to discover what is the matter with the world and to find a remedy.

  But the cause of all the unrest and strife is easily found. It is selfishness, nothing else, selfishness deep in the hearts of the people.

  It seems rather impossible that such a small thing as individual selfishness could cause so much trouble, but my selfishness added to your selfishness and that added to the selfishness of our neighbors all over the big, round world is not a small thing.

  We may have thought that our own greed and striving to take unfair advantage were not noticed and never would be known, but you and I and our neighbors make the neighborhood and neighborhoods make the states and states make the nation and the nations are the peoples of the world.

  No one would deny that the thoughts and actions and spirit of every person affect his neighborhood and it is just as plain that the spirit and temper of the communities are reflected in the state and nation and influence the whole world.

  The nations of Europe are selfishly trying to take advantage of one another in the settlements of boundaries and territory and so the World War is like a fire that has been stopped in its wild advance only to smoulder and break out here and there a little farther back along the sides.8

  At home, in the troubles between labor and capital, each is willing to stop disputes and eager to cure the unrest of the people if it can be done at the expense of the other party and leave them undisturbed in their own selfish gains.

  Following all the unrest and unreason on down to its real source where it lurks in the hearts of the people its roots will be found there in individual selfishness, in the desire to better one’s own condition at the expense of another, by whatever means possible, and this desire of each person infects groups of people and moves nations.

  Here and there one sees a criticism of Christianity because of the things that have happened and are still going on. “Christian civilization is a failure,” some say. “Christianity has not prevented these things, therefore it is a failure,” say others.

  But this is a
calling of things by the wrong names. It is rather the lack of Christianity that has brought us where we are. Not a lack of churches or religious forms, but of the real thing in our hearts.

  There is no oppression of a group of people but has its root and inception in the hearts of the oppressors. There is no wild lawlessness and riot and bloodlust of a mob but has its place in the hearts of the persons who are that mob. Just so, if justice and fairness and kindness fill the minds of a crowd of persons those things will be shown in their actions.

  So if we are eager to help in putting the world to rights, our first duty is to put ourselves right, to overcome our selfishness and be as eager that others shall be treated fairly as we are that no advantage shall be taken of ourselves; to deal justly and have a loving charity and mercy for others as we wish them to have for us. Then we may hear the Christmas angels singing in our own hearts, “Peace upon earth! Good will unto men.”

  * * *

  1. A flu epidemic swept over war-weakened Europe and North America following World War I. Millions died in this catastrophe that may have killed more people than the war itself.

  2. The strain of the World War.

  3. Britain, France, and Russia as allied against Germany during World War I.

  4. From the poem “The Voyage” by Washington Irving.

  5. Franklin K. Lane, at that time secretary of the interior.

  6. Running from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, the Lincoln Highway was built in the early 1910s as the first transcontinental route. In 1925, with the advent of numbered routes, various stretches became (from east to west) U.S. 1, U.S. 30 (nearly two-thirds of the length), U.S. 530, U.S. 40, and U.S. 50.

  7. Author unknown; possibly Laura herself.

  8. Some historians judge that the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, so exacerbated poor economic conditions in Europe that it made World War II almost inevitable.