Some Men Who Have Done Things, X. George Reed, the Cauliflower King

Some Men Who Have Done Things. BY JOHN HENRY EVANS, OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS' UNIVERSITY. X. — George Reed, the Cauliflower King. THE OLD RECIPE FOR MAKING A SUCCESSFUL MAN STILL THE BEST — INTEREST IN YOUR WORK, ABILITY TO THINK ABOUT IT, AND THOROUGHGOING TRUSTWORTHINESS. George Reed is a truck-gardener. He lives in Forest Dale, a self-reliant little town that is struggling hard to keep from being gobbled up by the Greater Salt Lake. By those city folks who eat lettuce in the spring, green peas and corn in the summer, and cabbage in the autumn, his occupation is supposed to last only during the few m,onths when Jack Frost is not hanging around, before which and after which he can have nothing to do but lie on the south side of the house counting his dollars and wondering if they will hold out till plowing time. This, however, is a great mistake. The picture is wholly wrong. First of all, because the man is George Reed, and, being George Reed, he is not in the habit of lying about, neither on the sunny side of a building, nor anywhere GEORGE REED AND WIFE.

926 IMPROVEMENT ERA. else. And, secondly, because by hard work and native intelligence, he has succeeded in making truck-gardening an all-year vocation. There is not a week during the fifty-two in the year when he does not cart vegetables to Market Row, in Salt Lake. And the story of how he does it is extremely interesting. He was born in England fifty-one years ago— on a farm. Tilling the soil, therefore, runs in the blood with him. Besides, he probably would have chosen it as his vocation, anyhow. He had only one year's schooling, during which he learned to read, but not to write. Those were the days before compulsory education became a law in England. A.nd then, too, the Reed family numbered twelve persons, including the parents, and every hand was necessary as soon as it could put itself to good use. Not till he was seventeen did he learn to sign his name. Since then, however, he has made up for those early deficiencies, for few men of his opportunities are better read. At fourteen he left home to seek employment. During the first few years he drove a team, he worked as a charcoal burner, he tended horses in Lord Hampton's stables, and he milked cows. But he always clung as close to Mother Earth as he could. At twenty-three he came to Utah, a married man. For a year or two before this he had been engaged in the dairy business in his own employment. The "Mormon" missionaries came to his home; their message appealed to his naturally religious mind, and so in a couple of weeks after first seeing them he joined the Church. Arrived in Salt Lake City, he rented less than an acre of ground in the western part of the town.' Here he demonstrated to himself and to such others as cared to pay attention to what he was doing, that there was money in the soil. For by intelligent application, he picked up just one thousand dollars during the summer months from that small patch of land. George Reed never goes about with his eyes shut. They are always wide open, seeing what they can see. And one can imagine him standing by the fence corner, overlooking that less than one acre, and the situation that confronted him. \ Of the two— the land and the situation — the land was by far the smaller. Anyway, it was while he stood there looking over them. He knew that he

SOME MEN WHO HA VE DONE THINGS. 927 would have to make his living off that acre. It would have to be worked for all it was worth. And this is what he did. He decided to put the whole piece in potatoes, and two kinds of celery and cauliflower. The celery rows were five feet apart, and between the rows were potatoes. Every other row of celery was early, the rest late. After the early celery was marketed, there was p^nty of earth left to heap up the late celery. The celery and potatoes occupied two-thirds of the plot. Celery and cauliflower took up the rest of the ground. The celery rows here were ten feet apart with the cauliflower in between. This was treated as the other was. And the net income was one thousand dollars! George Reed, the very first year of his arrival here, was thus a producer, and not a sponge. Nor was he experienced in this sort of thing. He had never done the like before. But that was no hindrance. He had hands — and a head. And he used both. All he did was to plan first and then execute, instead of executing first and then planning. He had certain things to do, he had certain conditions to do them under, and so he took the shortest way he could find. And that is all. At Farmer's Ward he did the same kind of work, and in much the same way. But poor health hampered him in his efforts. Besides, he saw the need of more land. And so he moved to Forest Dale. That was fifteen years ago. Here he rents thirty acres. He says he could get along just as well with twenty; only he can't get just twenty; he has to take the thirty or more; and so he takes the thirty. But for garden purposes the twenty acres suffice. And so Mr. Reed may be said to cultivate a twenty acre farm. Now, the task he has before him all the time is this; "How can I cultivate this piece of land so as to get the most out of it? What things that will grow here pay the best?" It is practically the same problem that confronts a business man, the same that confronts every man. Only not every man goes at the solution of his problem in this philosophical way. First of all, the ground has to be taken care of. Mr. Reed plows it twice, once in the fall and again in the spring. The second plowing is not so deep as the first. He keeps the land free

928 IMPROVEMENT ERA. from weeds. His reasoning on the matter of weeds is characteristic. Weeds, he says, take nourishment from the soil — nourishment that is needed by decent plants. Hence they must be kept down. And the sooner they are disposed of the better. The growing plants, too, must be cultivated. Most people, he thinks, use too much water. If the plants are cultivated every ten days, they can do with comparatively little water. And then when they are irrigated the thing must be done judiciously. Mr. Reed irrigates by a sort of instinct. A man ought to feel, he says, whether the water should run fast through the rows or slowly and long. You can't guess at these things. Mr. Reed has a good word also on the question of seed. Some buy the cheapest they can get. So does Mr. Reed, for that matter. But his idea of cheapness is different from most people's. "I can get cauliflower seed for six dollars a pound," he told me, "but I wouldn't plant it. All my cauliflower seed costs me fortyfour dollars a pound." There is a great difference between six dollars and forty-four dollars. But there is a vastly greater difference between the crops they respectively produce, so Mr. Reed says. Forty-four dollars thus proves a smaller outlay than six dollars. Which is perfectly obvious. Considerable thought, too, must be given to the matter of what to plant. Mr. Reed plows up, in September, some land that has been in cabbage and cauliflower and sows it in'1 spinach. This is ready for the market in March. The yield of this sort of garden truck is out of all proportion to the labor required to produce it. "I can plow and harrow and sow in the fall enough spinach in two hours and a half, at most, to bring me sixty dollars. Of course there is the work of cutting it for market. This would, perhaps, require, all told, two or three hours more labor." It is, therefore, a paying business to raise spinach. Let us say, then, that work proper begins with spinach in March. The next articles ready for the market are onions, lettuce, and parsley. These all have been planted in the fall. After this comes spinach again — spinach that has been planted in the spring — and spring lettuce and onions and parsley. Next come early cabbage and early cauliflower, then late cabbage and cauliflower. Celery and turnips (late), carrots and parsnips and beets

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 929 next have their turn. This brings us to the fall, when cauliflower is put upon the market. It is cauliflower that prolongs the marketing season for Mr. Reed. This is his largest crop. And it is this crop that has made him a king in Market Row. He has a way of maturing late cauliflower and preserving it through the winter. He got the secret in a course given in the University of Experience. He had the graciousness to tell me what it was, but I promised neither to give it away in the Era, nor to use it myself. And so, if the readers of this article are curious to know what it is, they will have to get it direct from him. Formerly, he told me, he lost all the cauliflower that did not mature before the frost and hard weather. But he has wrested from Nature this secret, by which he can actually mature this late cauliflower, and by which he has profited several thousand dollars. Cauliflower, as I have said, carries him to market from the time parsnips and beets are sold till it is time for spinach again. Mr. Reed must be a good bargainer, moreover, for he tells me that he has never had any trouble to sell his products. I know others that do have trouble. Without meaning to throw out insinuations against any other market gardeners, I must drop a hint or two as to how Mr. Reed has succeeded in disposing of his products. In the first place, he takes great pains to have only the best for sale. This goes a long way towards finding a market. If I may be forgiven a personalism, I may set down here the extreme delight with which I partook of a delicious morsel of asparagus that came to our house once, (only once!) and the all but overwhelming desire I had to hunt up the man who could grow such choice vegetables. When he raised celery and potatoes on that acre plot on Eighth West street, the merchants on Market Row were so eager for the celery that they were willing to come to his place and dig it up — which some of them did. That is the first point — to have good things to sell. And the second point is to possess plain, everyday, common, Christian honesty! When Mr. Reed tells them, up there on Market Row, that he has suchand-such articles, of such-and-such quality, the merchants have learned to feel as sure that they are what he says they are, as if they were looking at them with their eyes. And this is a great

930 IMPROVEMENT ERA. point in these days when you have to run to your wit's end for a thousand tests by which to know that you are not being cheated. There is no doctoring up vegetables to deceive the sharpest. And here are two more hints: Mr. Reed understands men — he studies character. "You know," he slyly observed to me, "some people know what they want, and some don't. The first class you've got to let alone. But the other fellows you've got to tell what to buy." Most probably he got this bit of information, too, at the University of Experience. A good many persons, however, have, seemingly, never passed through this school. And then, again, he never brings home any part of his load. He studies the market price. He sells what he can of his produce at the prevailing prices — and generally that is all he has,— but rather than take any home to spoil, he sells the rest for what he can get. Whether this is good business or not, from the standpoint of those who want to keep up the price, I do not know, but it strikes me as being mighty good sense. From all this Mr. Reed reaps an abundant harvest of dollars. Five thousand dollars is his gross income yearly, of which nearly half is cauliflower money. In his case the expenses drag down this figure somewhat. He has to rent his land and, at present, to hire his labor. But, even so, he nets between twenty-five hundred and three thousand dollars every year. Many a young man, and old one, too, wearing a pencil behind his ear, or perched on a stool by a high desk, or thumping away on a typewriter, or hanging around waiting for something to turn up, would not be the worse off for a wage like this, let alone having the freedom of the open air. But it requires brains to do this. There is no doubt about that. Some people think — usually those who would be hard put to it to tell a cow from a sheep, but for the blessed picture books — that a farmer has no particular use for eyes and ears and brains— only of hands. Well, some of them don't. But they are the sort generally who do not have any particular use for success, either — never having had any. Not so with men of the Reed stamp. Such men think. They have to. They could not earn success if they didn't. They put two and two together — and make four. And this is no small accomplishment, small as it seems.

SOME MEN WHO HAVE DONE THINGS. 931 When a plant does not do well, such a farmer must know why. Certain vegetables pay better than others. On every hand the tiller of the soil who is something other than the so-called clodhopper, is called on to think. "This work is very hard, though, isn't it?" I asked. "Not very," was the reply. "Not harder than most others. To be sure the hours are long during certain seasons of the year, but the work is not hard. And then there is a variety of tasks which you don't get in very many other occupations." And I thought of the French witticism made at the expense of our modern division of labor: "How sad it must be to think that you have never raised anything but a valve, or made anything greater than the eighteenth part of a pin!" Here is a man that can plow the ground, harrow it, fertilize it, plant it with cauliflowers — forty thousand of them — water them, cultivate them and market them — and not have a separate man to do each process. Mr. Reed gave me the best reason for the existence of an agricultural school that I have ever heard. Anyway he brought it home straighter. "I believe in schools where they teach agriculture," he said. "I started out without any such education. Everything I have learned about the nature of soils and plants 1 have had to get through hard experience. Of course, I have made many mistakes in getting my information — and lost money, to boot. Now, if I had been to an agricultural college, I should have been saved both time and expense. There are certain things you simply have to know about the soil and the plants, if you get along at all. If you get these things before you begin, you can start real business early; if you don't, why you will progress slowly."