Thus the enormous quantity
of cotton which grows every summer in the southern states, is packed
in bags, very tight, and is hauled to the rivers and creeks, and there
it is put into steamboats and sent to the great seaports, and at the
seaports it is put into ships, which carry it to England or to the
northern states, to be manufactured; and it is so valuable, that it
will bring a price sufficient to pay all the persons that have been
employed in raising it, or in transporting it. But the grass that
grows in the northern countries can not be transported. The mills for
manufacturing cotton may be in one country, and the cotton be raised
in another, and then, after the cotton is gathered, it may be packed
and sent thousands of miles to be manufactured. But the sheep and oxen
which are to eat the hay, can not be kept in one country, while the
grass which they feed upon grows in another. The animals must live, in
general, on the very farm which the grass grows upon. Thus, while the
cotton cultivator has nothing to do but to raise his cotton and send
it to market, the grass cultivator must not only raise his grass, but
he must provide for and take care of all the animals which are to
eat it. This makes the agriculture of the northern states a far more
complicated business, because the care of animals runs into great
detail, and requires great skill, and sound judgment, and the exercise
of constant discretion.
"You observe," continued Forester, "that it is by the intervention of
animals that the farmer gets the product of his land into such a shape
that it will bear transportation. For instance, he feeds out his hay
to his sheep, attending them with care and skill all the winter. In
the spring he shears off their fleeces; and now he has got something
which he _can_ send to market. He has turned his grass into wool,
and thus got its value into a much more compact form. The wool will
bear transportation. Perhaps he gave a whole load of hay to his sheep,
to produce a single bag of wool. So the bag of wool is worth as much
as the load of hay, and is very much more easily carried to market. He
can put it upon his lumber-box, and drive off fifty miles with it, to
market, without any difficulty."
"His lumber-box?" asked Marco. "What is that?"
"Didn't you ever see a lumber-box?" asked Forester. "It is a square
box, on runners, like those of a sleigh. The farmers have them to haul
their produce to market."
"Why do they call it a lumber-box?" asked Marco.
[Illustration: THE LUMBER-BOX.]
"Why, when the country was first settled, they used to carry lumber to
market principally; that is, bundles of shingles and clapboards, which
they made from timber cut in the woods. It requires some time for a
new farm, made in the forests, to get into a condition to produce
much grass for cattle. I suppose that it was in this way that these
vehicles got the name of lumber-boxes. You will see a great many
of them, in the winter season, coming down from every part of the
country, toward the large towns on the rivers, filled with produce."
"What else do the farmers turn their grass into, besides wool?" asked
Marco.
"Into beef," said Forester. "They raise cows and oxen. They let them
eat the grass as it grows, all summer, and in the winter they feed
them with what they have cut and dried and stored in the barn for
them. The farmers are all ambitious to cut as much hay as they can,
and to keep a large stock of cattle. Thus they turn the grass into
beef, and the beef can be easily transported. In fact, it almost
transports itself."
"How do you mean?" asked Marco.
"Why, the oxen and cows, when they are fat and ready for market, walk
off in droves to Boston, to be killed. They don't kill them where they
are raised, for then they would have to haul away the beef in wagons
or sleighs, but make the animals walk to market themselves, and kill
them there. But the farmers don't generally take their own cattle to
market. Men go about the country, and call upon the farmers, and buy
their cattle, and thus collect great droves. These men are called
drovers. In traveling in this part of the country, late in the fall,
you would see great droves of cattle and sheep, passing along the
road, all going to Boston, or rather Brighton."
"Where is Brighton?" asked Marco.
"It is a town very near Boston, where the great cattle market is held.
The Boston dealers come out to Brighton, and buy the cattle, and have
them slaughtered, and the beef packed and sent away all over the
world. Thus the farmers turn the grass into beef, and in that shape it
can be transported and sold."
"And what else?" asked Marco.
"Why, they raise a great many horses in Vermont," replied Forester.
"These horses live upon grass, eating it as it grows in the pastures
and on the mountains, in the summer, and being fed upon hay in the
barn in the winter. These horses, when they are four or five years
old, are sent away to market to be sold. They can be transported very
easily. A man will ride one, and lead four or five by his side. They
will be worth perhaps seventy-five dollars apiece; so that one man
will easily take along with him, three or four hundred dollars' worth
of the produce of the farm, in the shape of horses; whereas the hay
which had been consumed on the farm to make these horses, it would
have taken forty yoke of oxen to move."
"Forty yoke!" repeated Marco.
