1909 - Where Farmers Stay Overnight Before Market Day

 

From the Hamilton Times.    September 18, 1909.

“A citizen who for some weeks has been taking a great interest in Hamilton market and the life of the farmer and fruit man started out yesterday to find out a few things for himself. He spent the night among them, and this is what he writes of what he saw:

“For some weeks a perplexing question has been ‘where do all the farmers stay for the night who come to the market in the early afternoon, prior to market day?’

“I knew they did not return home, because their wagons were on the market all night and the horses in a stable. The question aroused my curiosity, for hundreds of farmers come to the city in the afternoon preceding the regular market days, and at bedtime, I had seen few farmers around the hotels.

“’Where do they stay?’

“I have found out.

“Last night, I donned the oldest clothes I could find, substituted for my linen collar a muffler of many colors, and for my Christy hat an ‘ear warmer’ and in short made myself look a farmer in his dishabille.

“It was nearing 11 o’clock last night when I went to the market square, and I loitered around in conversation with some of the famers, and while standing in front of the wagons dozens of people asked me the price of everything from onions to watermelons, and reluctantly I had to confess ignorance, and the look on their faces seemed to say ‘What kind of farmer are you anyway?’

“After chatting with several farmers and getting my suction pipe of curiosity down in their well of information< I succeeded in finding out what I wanted to know; that was where the farmers slept during the night.

“By 11 o’clock, I had become very friendly with a young fruit farmer from Bartonville, with whom I intimated a desire to stay through the night. Whether or not he thought I was a young farmer, a stranger, I cannot positively say, but he invited me to ‘come and dig in’ with him in the barn of a nearby livery stable, where he said about 200 farmers slept.

‘ ‘Where do the other farmers stay,’ I questioned.

“ ‘Some in other barns, some in hotels and some on their wagons.’

“ ‘Where do the women stay all night?’

“ ‘Oh, most of them sleep on their wagons where it is a fine night.’

“However, he signified his intention of going to the barn, so I went with him.

“ ‘Will you let me share your robe?’

“ ‘Why, certainly.’

“So off we started ; in a few minutes we were at the stable, and he went and gave a final look at his horse before going to the barn. ‘Now, follow me,’ he said. We climbed a ladder to the barn, over a stable.

“It was as black as the office cat when we got into the loft, and the first thing I knew I was falling over men almost every step I took, and I had grave apprehensions of planting my foot accidentally on some sleeper’s face, which would probably arouse his ire sufficiently to impel to put his fist in mine.

“There was a plentiful supply of hay in the barn, loose and in bundles, or I think they call them ‘trusses.’ When my eyes became used to the light, I could get men curled up in robes everywhere. My farmer friend evidently knew the way and made for a corner and I followed closely on his heels.

“He found the desired spot, and down we both planted ourselves in the sweet-smelling hay, to the accompaniment of loud snoring from many of the other occupations. I was given good half of my companion’s robe, and very soon he was helping in the nocturnal orchestra, while I lay for a time thinking and listening to the horses munching their supper below and to a number of cackling geese in the yard., which seemed to be conscious of a stranger near, and were holding a discussion on the subject in the language of their tribe. I thanked Providence that I was not a farmer. The night before I was at the manufacturers’ banquet, and as I looked then at  the lovely dishes of fruit there, the peaches with their pink and red cheeks, apples which seemed to be in a fever, so red were they, and at all the other luscious fruit, I wondered how many there  had any idea what it cost to get them there.

“However, I was tired and soon fell asleep, but was repeatedly awakened by men coming in for the night. Heads would be poked up and warnings shouted as to where men were sleeping and I had serious misgivings that someone would plant his foot across my physiognomy. There was no talking in that bedroom; nor discussion on whether Cook’s or Peary’s story was authentic about the discovery of the North Pole or whether any beneficial results had been accomplished by the manufacturers’ convention either for themselves or for the masses.

“Finally, I fell into a long sleep. The next thing I was conscious of was a man telling me it was half past four, accompanied by a tap on the ribs and the owner of the robe saying he must get up to breakfast and wanting to know if I was ready. I replied in the affirmative, so up we got and, as I passed through the barn to the ladder of descent, I saw scores of tired-looking men curled up in rugs in the hay. One sight particularly caught my eye. It was a young lad about 15 years of age, half resting on a bundle of hay and leaning against another, his head hanging backwards towards his left shoulder, asleep from sheer exhaustion. I had many queer thoughts on my way to the restaurant, but a large tract of ham prevented from feeling lonely by two eggs, was served up to me and after it had been washed down by several gills of steaming tea< I felt more optimistic and I had as my guest, the young man who had been so kind to me during the night.

“After breakfast, I took a walk through the market. It was then 5 o’clock. Many were stirring, but I saw many curled up in their buffalo robes on their wagons, numbers of whom were women.

“I went home, changed my clothes and returned to the market in time to see the women stirring, but how pinched they looked, for it was a cold night.

“Many of those women I saw on the market this morning are mothers of nation builders, and in two short week their sons and daughters will be returning to the universities.

“ ‘But why do farmers and their wives come to market the day before?’ you ask. The answer is simply to secure a stand.

“Then you ask, ‘Why don’t they stay at hotels. They can afford it?’

“Probably they can, but where is the hotel to accommodate scores of men who cannot get until midnight and up at four, or half past? The need for a large market is evident, and a suitable place should be provided for the farmers to sleep, which could be made self-supporting.

“And yet in face of all these conditions, I saw women buyers on the market quibbling over five cents on a basket of carrots or peaches, as they case may be – and men too.

“What of the effect on the constitutions of the farmers and their wives?

“ ‘It is hard on a man’s health all right,’ said a farmer to me.

“ ‘It’s a darned hard thing when a fellow has to come in so early to get a stand,’ said another. ‘And everybody unloads abuse on the farmer, he is a hayseed, a rube, and a hundred other abusive names and yet that big banquet the other night would have looked like a punctured bicycle tire without his energy.’