Part 18

nt. So they were married by the Congregational "meenister," and for a wedding-tour fared forth Westward to fame and fortune. "Out West" then meant York State, and the "Far West" was Ohio. They reached Oneida County, New York, and stopped for a few days ere they pushed on to the frontier. The site was beautiful, the location favorable. And the farmer at whose house they were making their stay was restless and wanted to sell out. That night the young couple talked it over. They had a few hundred dollars saved, sewed in a belt and in a dress bodice. They got the money out and recounted it. In the morning they told their host how much money they had and offered to give him all of this money for his farm. He was to leave them a yoke of oxen, a cow, a pig and six sheep. He accepted the offer, the money was paid, the deed made out and the man vacated, leaving the bride and groom in possession. So here they lived their lives; here they worked, planned, aspired and prospered; here, too, their children were born and raised; and down at the little village cemetery they sleep, side by side. In life they were never separated and in death they are not divided. * * * * * "The first requisite in education," said Herbert Spencer, "is that man shall be a good animal." Philip D. Armour fulfilled the requirements. He was dowered with a vital power that fed his restless brain and made him a regular dynamo of energy for sixty-nine years--and with a little care at the last should have run for ninety years with never a hotbox. He used to say, "If my ancestors had been selected for me by Greek philosophers, specialists in heredity, they could not have done better. I can not imagine a better woman than my mother. My childhood was ideal. God did not overlook me." Well did this happy, exuberant, healthy man say that his parentage and childhood environment were ideal. Here was a family of six boys and three girls, brought up on a beautiful hillside farm amid as peaceful and lovely a landscape as ever the sun shone upon. Down across the creek there were a hundred acres of bottom-land that always laughed a harvest under the skilful management of Danforth Armour. Yet the market for surplus products was distant, so luxury and leisure were out of the question. And yet work wasn't drudgery. Woods, hills, running streams, the sawmill and the gristmill, the path across the meadow, the open road, the miracle of the seasons, the sugar-bush, the freshet that carried away the bridge, the first Spring flowers peeping from beneath the snow on the south side of rotting logs, the trees bursting into leaf, the hills white with blossoms of wild cherry and hawthorn, the Saturday afternoon when the boys could fish, the old swimming-hole, the bathing of the little ones in the creek, the growing crops in the bottom-land, bee-trees and wild honey, coon-hunts by moonlight, the tracks of deer down by the salt-lick, bears in the green corn, harvest-time, hog-killing days, frost upon the pumpkin and fodder in the shock, wild turkeys in the clearing, revival-meetings, spelling-bees, debates at the schoolhouse, school at the log schoolhouse in Stockbridge, barn-raisings, dances in the new barn, quilting-bees, steers to break, colts to ride, apple butter, soft soap, pickled pigs' feet, smoked hams, side-meat, shelled walnuts, coonskins on the barn-door, Winter and the first fall of snow, boots to grease, harness to mend, backlogs, hickory-nuts, cider, a few books and all the other wonderful and enchanting things that a country life, not too isolated, brings to the boys and girls born where the rain makes musical patter on the roof and the hand of a loving mother tucks you in at night! Here was a mother who gave to the world six sons, five of whom grew to an honored manhood and proved themselves men of power. One of the girls, Marietta, was a woman of extraordinary personality, as picturesquely heroic as Philip Armour, himself. This mother never had a servant-girl, a laundress or a dressmaker. The manicure and the beauty-doctor were still in the matrix of time, as yet unguessed. On Sunday there was a full wagonload of Armours, big and little, to go to the Congregational Church at Stockbridge. Let us hope the wagon was yellow and the horses gray. Do not imagine that a family like this is lonely. There is constant work; the day is packed with duties, and night comes with its grateful rest. There is no time to be either bad or unhappy, nor is there leisure to reflect on your virtues. No one line of thought receives enough attention to disturb the balance of things. To be so busy that you "forget it" is very fortunate. The child brought up with a happy proportion of play and responsibility, of work and freedom, of love and discipline, has surely not been overlooked by Providence. The "problem of education" is a problem only to the superlatively wise and the tremendously great. To plain people life is no problem. Things become complex only when we worry over them. So the recipe for educating children is this: Educate yourself. * * * * * When Philip D. Armour was nineteen the home nest seemed crowded. The younger brothers were coming along to do the work, and the absence of one "will be one less to feed" he said to his mother. The gold-fields of California were calling. This mother was too sensible and loving to allow her boy to run away--if he was going, he should go with her blessing. She got together a hundred dollars in cash. With this and a pack on his back Philip started on foot for the land of Eldorado. Four men were in the party, all from Oneida County. He walked all the way and arrived on schedule, after a six months' journey. Philip was the only one in the party who did not grow sick nor weary. One died, two turned back, but Philip trudged on with the procession that seemed to increase as it neared the gold-fields. Arriving in California, this very sensible country boy figured it out that mining was a gamble. A very few grew rich, but the many were desperately poor. Most of those who got a little money ahead spent it in prospecting for bigger finds and soon were again penniless. He decided that he would not bet on anything but his own ability. Instead of digging for gold, he set to work digging ditches for men who had mines, but no water. This making ditches was plain labor, without excitement, chance or glamour. You knew beforehand just how much you would make. Philip was strong and patient; he could work from sunrise to sunset. He was paid five dollars a day. Then he took contracts to dig ditches, and sometimes he made ten dollars a day. Parties who were "busted" and wished to borrow were offered a job. He set them to work and paid them for what they did, and no more. It was all a question of mathematics. In five years Philip Armour had saved eight thousand dollars. It was enough to buy the best farm in Oneida County, and this was all he wanted. There was a girl back there who had taunted him and dared him to go away and make his fortune. They parted in a tiff--that's the way she got rid of him. There was another man in the case, but Philip was too innocent to know this. The peaceful hills of New York lured and beckoned. He responded to the call and started back home. In half the time it took to go, he had arrived. But alas, the hills had shrunken. The mighty stream that once ran through Stockbridge was but a rill. And the girl--the girl had married another--a worthy horse-doctor. Philip called on her. She was yellow and tired and had two fine babies. She was glad to see her old friend Philip, but the past was as dead to her as the present. In her handgrasp there was no thrill. She had given him a big chase; and soon his sadness made way for gratitude in that she had married the horse-doctor. He gave them his blessing. Philip looked around at farms--several were for sale, but none suited him. On the way back from California he had traveled by way of the Great Lakes and stopped two days at Milwaukee. It was a fine city--a growing place, the gateway of the West and the market-place where the vessels loaded for the East. Milwaukee had one rival--Chicago, eighty-five miles south. Chicago, however, was on low, flat, marshy ground. It would always be a city, of course, because it was the end of navigation, but Milwaukee would feed and stock the folks who were westward bound. So to Milwaukee went Philip Armour, resolved there to stake his fortune in trade. Opportunity offered and he joined with Fred B. Miles, on March First, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, in the produce and commission business. Each man put in five hundred dollars. The business prospered. One of the great products in demand was smoked and pickled meats. At that time farmers salted and smoked hams and brought them to town, with furs, pelts and bags of wheat. All the tide of humanity that streamed into Milwaukee, westward bound, bought smoked or pickled meats--something that would keep and be always handy. These were Winter-packed. The largest packer was John Plankinton, who was a success. John was knowing, and he made Phil. Armour his junior partner, as Plankinton and Armour. Then business sizzled. They were at the plant at four o'clock in the morning. They discovered how to make a hog yield four hams. Our soldiers needed the hams and the barreled pork, so shortly more hogs came to market. The War's end found the new firm much stronger and well stocked with large orders for mess-pork, sold for future delivery at war-time prices, which contracts they filled at a much lower cost and to their financial satisfaction. Their guesser was good and they prospered. Meantime, the city of Chicago grew faster than Milwaukee. There was a rich country south of Chicago, as well as west, and of this Philip Armour had really never thought. Chicago was a better market for pickled pork and corned beef than Milwaukee, as more boats fitted out there, and more emigrants were landing on their way to take up government land. One of Mr. Armour's brothers, Joe, was a packer in Chicago. Another brother, H. O., was in the commission business there. Joe's health, it seems, was pretty bad, so in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, Philip Armour came to Chicago, and shortly the house of Armour and Company came into being--H. O. Armour going to New York to look after Eastern trade and financing. In those days branch houses were unknown and packing-house products were handled by jobbers. * * * * * The Father of the Packing-House Industry was Philip Danforth Armour. The business of the Packing-House Industry is to gather up the food-products of America and distribute them to the world. Let the fact here be stated that the world is better fed today than it ever has been since Herodotus sharpened his faber and began writing history, four hundred fifty years before Christ. In this matter of food, the danger lies in overeating and not in lack of provender. The business of Armour and Company is to buy from the producer and distribute to the consumer. So Armour and Company have to satisfy two parties--the producer and the consumer. Both being fairly treated have a perfect right to grumble. The buyer of things which Nature forces the man to buy, is usually a complainer, and he complains of the seller because he is near, just as a man kicks the cat and takes it out on his wife, or the mother scolds the children. To the farmers, Armour used to say with stunning truth, "You get more for your produce today than you got before I showed up on the scene; and you get your money on the minute, without haggle or question. I furnish you an instantaneous market." To the consumer he sa