Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1919 — THE BIG MAN OF THE WEST [ARTICLE]

THE BIG MAN OF THE WEST

WILLIAM A. RINEHART, KING OF MISSOURI FARMERS, PAID HIGH TRIBUTE. An article, many columns in length and of considerable more than passing interest to our citizens, -telling of the success of a former local boy, William A. Rinehart, may be found in (the current issue of the Country Gentleman. The article dwells entirely upon the subject of the success Mr. Rinehart has attained in gaining his title as the king of Missouri farmers, and is entitled, “Putting the Bottom on Top.” The 'lack of spaice does not permit of the publishing of the entire article, but the extent of Mr. Rinehart’s glorious march to victory over the Missouri soil may be realized by the reader from the following extracts:

Fifteen years ago in Palmyra., Missouri, William A. Rinehart -laid out for himself the tidy job of draining and clearing about 5,000 acres of Mississippi bottom land. With the exception of a few hundred acres this land was considered permanently unfit for safe cultivation. Today 2,500 and more acres are tide-drained, and gamble-proof so far as drainage can take the gamble out of farming. It is drajpage on a huge scale, but drainage is drainage after all, and every man with a piece of “risky” land should be upheartened by what has been done in this Mississippi bottom. Five thousands acres is a big tract to swing. I don’t suppose William A. Rinehart means to tie himself up to that many acres indefinitely. The risks that go with farming on such a scale are no small risks. It is frankly speaking, a straight business enterprise for the enhancement and creation of land values. But here at least, on this big Palmyra tract, is a splendid example of what can be effected with nerve and intelligence ( and capital; and it is a good in- ( stance of how the country's agricultural wealth can ibg shoved up a . few pegs, year by year, 'by making f unfit land fit. ( Palmyra, Missouri, is a town about i half way between Quincy, Illinois, ( and Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal, j you may recall, was the river town , made famous by Mark Twain. . Making a Bay Work. t At this point the Mississippi is a I stream, too. Just the other day I was standing on one of its banks, or rather on the levee on Rinehart’s farm, watching the blue water flow by very quietly and quickly, as though (it had an important date in the Gulf of Mexico and didn't want > to ibe disturbed. The old Mlississip- ! pi looked as gentle and tractable as 1 though he would eat out of yojir < hand. But that old river certainly > can be disagreeable when he tries; I and the endless pranks he- commits have about the same quality of ' humior in them as that displayed I by a full-size mastodon scratching himself against a two-year-old apple ' tree. 1 One time, years ago, the Mississippi rolled up a tog spring flood, • which hung over the bottom lands • nobody knows how long. The flood ; subsided at last, but when it had ; gone it was found that the river had just playfully carved out a sort of bay several miles long, several ' hundred yards wide, and deep ' enough for navigation, wholly in- 1 closing a mile-broad strip of the mainland. . • _ - ... - I

That bay 'has made iit possible for William A. Rinehart to convert bottom tad -which was worth nothing, or less than nothing, into land which produced 55,000 bushels of wheat last year, besides either crops of staggering •dimensions. This year he has 2,700 acres in wheat that will thresh out better than an average of thirty bushels. A tidy little crop of more than 80,000 'bushels, worth—well, figure it cut at the government’s price and you’ll see ,th«t all Mr. Rinehart has td worry about is his income tax. The bay was a solution of the drainage difficulty; but for one hundred years nobody realized it—until Rinehart came along. A couple of up-and-coming- gentlemen founded a city on the bank of the Mississippi at a point which is now within the confines of the Rinehart farm. They called it Marion City. This was back in the thirties of the last century. Marion City was to be the metropolis of (the west. They sold stock in the enterprise to the amount of hundreds of thousands off dollars. Settlers came, traders came; they built warehouses, churches, banks. • Then, one spring, the Mississippi began to rise and when it finished rising Marion City was half way to New Orleans, and the foundations of it were knee-deep in a black slime that oozed malaria and smelled like a dockyard. Then Rinehart came along with a drainage idea. A Bit of Good Luck. William A. Rinehart went from central Ind iana, where he was bom and raised, to Buffalo, New York; in the -palmy days of live-cattle shipping to Europe. The business was then in its prune, and 'he made money. Butt the introduction of frozen-meat ships began Ito put a kink in the cattle shipments; and the live-cattle shipping business got too easy—that is, in the sense that more and more “tramp” ibotttoms became available year after year, with the result that every so often a shipper laid bis livestock down, in Liverpool or London into a glutted market, and got stung. . ■ • Rinehart tern- that the cattle-ahip-

ping game was up. Besides that he had a hunger fox some ImmL &* went to Missouri. Up in Schuyler county, in the vScdnity of Queen City, Binehart bought a couple of thousand acres of bottom Mind. It was partly in timber and partfly in tillable land. It needed drainage. Rinehart drained it, and raised fine crops of com. He added, parcel by parcel, more than two thousand more acres to his holdings. At that time the nearest railroad was too many miles away. There were millions of feet of fine hard timber, some of it virgin, hickory, bp texcept for the very highestgrade axle stock, there was no money in hauling it Then a railroad was pushed through, right into Rinehart’s property, and for several years he had sawmills running, sending that timber to market. He made money. Rinehart believed in tile. He tiled and tiled that Schuyler county farm, and took Ithe gamble pretty nearly out of corn farming up there. He believed that a piece of bottom land might be good, but proper drainage Would make it better. Then, after he had created an estate that would 'have satisfied Ithe ordinary mortal, he looked round for something bigger, harder amid more profitable. So he took on the Mississippi bottom at Palmyra as about his size. Mind you, this was the bottom that couldn’t be drained. It would break any man that tried it. People said: “It can’t be done. If it could be done it would have been done long ago. He can’t keep the Mississippi out of that land. Even if he can keep the big river out, the back-wash up the creek will swamp him. If he makes a levee against the creek backwater, there is that xay which is connected with the Mississippi on both ends and that will overflow with the river. And even if you should stop up both ends of the bay, how can you drain the land? What can you drain it inIto?” Miles and Miles of Tile. This was in 1904. The first thing Rinehart had Ito do, as ter buying up that 5,000 acres of land at an average of about twenty-five dollars an acre, was Ito get the United States government to give its permission and help on one point. This point was, that both ends "of the bay coming from the Mississippi river and emptying • into it had to be plugged up. A rock dam had to be built to keep the river out. This was distinctly a federal matter, and the government entered wisely (into it and did its part. The two ends of the bay were filled with stone and a rock dam built along the river’s edge. There the government quit, saying, “We’ve done our part. That’s all we data do for you. If you think you can drain the land, gb to it It’s not our affair.” The next thing necessary was to throw up a levee to keep the water from backing on to these' 5,000 acres of Rinehart’s and a number of thousands of other acres in 'the same locality owned by others. So a levee twelve miles long, averaging ten feet high, had to be built. This levee followed the Ime of “fatal depression,” as you might call it, to the Mississippi, then went right along on top of the government’s rock dam and back to higher ground on the other ride. So far as Rinehart’s land was concerned, what he had now at this point was a big piece of land surrounded 'by a levee on the low side and by high land on the other, with patches of ground which could be depended on for crops in any ordinary year, but .the majority of which ground was dotted with sloughs, frog ponds and gamble land. “I will make every square foot of this land as free from swamp hazard as though it were - in Western Kansas,” said Rinehart. “You will, will you?” said the unbeMevers. “And will you kindly tell us what you will drain into?” “Sure. Into ithe bay.”

That Was in 1904-1905. Today there is just one slough on the property, and Rinehart keeps that purposely until ihe is ready to send a big tile through from it into the bay. Where water used to stand foot-deep, wheat now grows at a thirty-bushel average, with one" tenacre piece which has yielded as high as fifty-two bushels to the acre; bom crops that in a decent season will run sixty bushels to the acre easily; four and five cuttings of alfalfa—without inoculation —making close to a ton. per cutting. And all the rest of it. The uniform productiveness of this land ,-at the present time is a goodly sight. And it was achieved by drainage. Here is the way it was done: “In the first pttace,” said Mr. Rinehart, “I’ll tell you that up to the present time I have land better than 240 miles of tile of various sizes. That is to say, somewhere round 2,500,000 pieces of tile. Of course, the end of my tiling is not yet in sight. We tile here right through the year, Whenever the tile and labor are available.” And sure enough just as the owner was speaking we came to a freshly dug trench where a lateral was being put in. ‘T lay tile right in the midst of the growing season,” went on Mr. Rinrihart- “Yes, right through a field of wheat, of cam or anything else. You might think that was wasteful. Of course it does waste something; but it is absolutely the only way to get the work dope. “When I started draining these 5,000 acres, some of the land, as I’ve said, was productive. It was a comparatively small part. My idea was Ito get the worst spots drained first For, you see, we could, saise something on the higher ground, but the other was good for less than nothing. It wap in one of two things, bull grass or timber. And even the timber down here hasn’t tiie quality of the timber thait I had

on my Schuyler county farm. “I employed, «npk>y, a very capable engineer by the year. The main tiles, froan twelve to eighteen inches in size, all go into the bay. NafaHttly the dririn tiles vary in depth, depending on •the elevation of the land. One of our mains—a twelve-inch—Was laid at a depth of eight feet and four inches for a distance of 5,600 feet—over a mile. That was a job! “Rrobably a good many of our farmer friends will want to know what sizes of tile I use. I use practically all sizes, from four to eighteen inches, according to conditions. My jbasMt.-ifor laterals is the five-inch. I use some four-inch. Our laterals are Mad for the mast part at a depth of thirty to thirtysix inches. “I’ve used many sorts of tile, according to when and where it could the obtained. Once I bought a lot of glazed tile. But most of it is ii ng Lazed tile right from our own state of Missouri. I’ve had some Illinois tile, but I like this Missouri trie better. Let’s go up and look at some of it at the siding.” Siding! That sounded good. A farm with its own siding. Sure enough, it would give the average farmer reason enough to be envious to see that 1,200-foot switch, right plump where it is needed, din the heart of .the Rinehart farm. Very near the riding is the “shop,” where the blacksmithing is done, and the tools are repaired, and that sort of thing. Alongside the siding was a mountain of tile of all sizes—not less than a hundred thousand feet, I should guess. Certainly they do make a fine quality of tile at the Missouri plant where this came from. It was about as free from flaw and crack and chipped spots as could be possible. Mr. Rinehart suddenly pulled Up the horses. “There!” he said, pointing. “Here’s a good example of what drainage has done for this land. There’s a 210-acre piece of wheat. Looks fine, doesn’t it? Weil, before that piece of 210 acres was drained, ninety acres of it after a two-inch rain was under water. That ninety acres,- of course, affected a whole lot more round it. It was saiid to me that that piece could not possibly be drained. Well, they were wrong. Giddap!” Alaike Clover * Big Help. “Now as to crops: Last yeax we had 2,000 acres in wheat. We produced 55,690 bushels. So the average to the acre was between twentyseven and a half and twenty-eight bushels. The highest yield on any one piece was fifty-two bushels to the acre.” .

“And why that big production on that one piece, Mr. Rinehart?” “It was a piece .of clover land. You can say for me that alsdke clover is the big thing on these bottom lands. It does more work on these lands than anything else we have, and does it for nothing. We take a piece of land that is in wild grass and sow the ailsike seed on it along in February, when.the frost is going out of the ground and conditions are right.” “You disk it in, I suppose?” “Not at all. We just scatter the seed right upon the wild grass. The rains come along and send it into the ground. Then the wild grass gives it perfect protection until it gets a start. The wild grass nan be burned or pastured off, and in one season the attsike has choked the old grass out. We have 500 acres of it; and don’t forget to put me down as saying that alsike is the real thing in these bottoms. “We’ve got 130 acres in alfalfa. We haven’t inoculated. It has made a strong ton to the acre each cutting. AH of it was cut four times, and some of it five. We feed most of it on the farm.”

A good many mules have passed through the hands of W. A, Rinehart educe he came to Missouri sixteen years ago. But I hasten to say that he isn’t a mule trader. He buys a good many and sells a good many, but the main point is that he is a farmer who works* mules —works the best, because the best are none /too good. Mr. Rinehart matures about 500 Poland China hogs a year and ahips them to the market Also he runs about 200 cattle to clean up the stalk fields. But after all, the great thing about the Rinehart farm is not that it raises 55,000 bushels of wheat or has wonderfully fine mules or ships 500 hogs or finishes 200 cattle—or even that it is going to raise 80,000 bushels of wheat thus coming season, unless the dope goes wrong. It is that such a farm is a creator of values and that the drainage work here, though on a larger scale than most farmers would ever be engaged in, is yet full of encouragement for any man Who wants to know what properly laid tiles will do.