Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, March 8, 1903, Page 30

B ,‘ } 3 ¥ | Rt SO0 g e How the Dutch People Dress and Live WN DUTCH DAIRY LAND. (Copyright, 1908, by Frank G. Carpenter.) MSTERDAM, Feb. 256.—(8pecial Correspondence of The Bee.)—If you want to see the Dutch as they are you must go to the backwoods of Holland. You will find there disticts where the people drees the same from generation to generaiion and whers their customs are unchanged by the ages. This ic 80 on some of the islands of Zee~ land, lying in tYe mouth of the Scheldt and also in north Holland on the edge of the German ocean. Take, for instance, the island of Marken, in tbe Zuyder Zee, not far from this great city of Amsterdam. It seems to be an- other world. 7T people look down upon modern clothing and dress as the Dutch did fifty years ago. The men wear bloomers so full at the hips that you could make a dress skirt out of one pair of trousers. They have roundabouts or shirtwaists of black wool, with big silver buttons running Iin two rows down to the waist, where the trousers are fastened by buttons as large as an after dinned coffoe cup saucer. The trousers stop at the root of the calf and below are woolen stockings and clogs. The women wear gorgeous red and white caps, red bodices and white skirts, which fall to the knees and below have blue or black stockings and clogs. Their caps come down almost to the eyes, ending in a fringe of banged hair, which covers the ears, a curl .of bhair hanging down each cheek to the shoulder. I went out to Marken one day and spent ‘he day photographing the people and ‘wuses. I had no trouble In getting good osctures, for every man, woman und child var ready to pose for a certain number of rennies, and the little ones trotted along at ny heels in their clogs begging me to take heir pictures and then asking for money. tven the men demanded money when photo- graphed, and I think the burgomaster him- self would have posed for less than a guil- der. T usually paid 4 cents a person, and a little more when I photographed in the houses. The houses of Marken are low, one and a half-story buildings, with ridge roofs painted black, built along narrow streets :n little villages here and there over the island. I entered ome at the invitation ef the owner, an old Dutchman, who wore a pair of trousers each leg of which was as big as a two-bushel Lag. His whole house was not more than twenty-four feet square, but it was so clean that you could see your face in evvrylfnng in it. The floors were scrubbed like a kitehen table on Saturday night, and the plates on the walls fairly shone. About the room were cupboards, each containing a bed, with the whitest of pillows and quilts beautifully embroidered. The kitchen utensils were copper, and two brass candlecsticks, which shone like gold, stood on a shelf under the plates, On my way o Marken I stopped at Broeck, a little farming town in the midst of the meadows, to see a cheese factory. The factory was house, stable and cheese- making establinhment combined. This is so throughout the dairy regions of Holland. The hay is stowed away in the garret, and one-half of the house is glvea up to the cows, which are brought in doors during the winter and kept there The stable part of the house had accom- modation for thirty cows, two for each stall, and it was cleaner than the average American kitchen. The cows were cut dur- fng my visit, but I walked with clean feet from stall to stall, making notes of the ar- rangements. The walls of the stalls are painted black to the height of the cows and white above that. In front of each stall there is a window with lace curlains over it, and at the back a drain six inches deep, which is flooded daily with water and kept 80 clean that there is little perceptible odor. But as for that, the Dutch say that cow smells are healthful, and th: farmers do not mind them at all. I was Interested in the arrangements .o keep the cows clean. Every cow Is well bedded, and it has, in addition, a rope the size of a clothes line with a sirap loop at its end to hold up its tail. One end of the rope is fastened to the rafters just over the cow, 80 raising the tail that there is no DUTCHM®N IN THEIR BLOOMERS. GROUP OF DUTCH CHILDREN, danger of its being flirted through the milk or into the eye of the mtker.™ In a room adjoining this was the cheese room, with a hundred balls of fresh Edam cheese on the racks. The cheese was of a rich yellow color and more delicious than any wo have in the United States. 1 was shown the cheese pres<es, arnd as I exam- ined them I noticed some American ofl stoves on the shelves nearby, an evidence that the American invasion has evidently found its place in this out of the way fac- tory. The old lady who owned the estab- lishment explained the process of cheese- making, bobbing the gold hcrns over her eyes to and fro as she did so. T like the Dutech country people! They are the quaintest of all the characters of the Netherlands, and they remind you ef the pictures of Holland ycu gee in the gallerfes. The people of the towns dress about the same as we do, but in the back distriets are girls with lace capgs and helmets of gold, silver and brass, and also c¢orkscrew gold horns sticking out on each side of the eyes. The women working in the fields wear black hats and wide linen sk'ris, and It is not uncommon to find a young man with a thick mop of hair cut straight cff at the neck, a richly embroidered shirt, a roundabout with enormous silver buttons and trousers cf velveteen which look like enormous bags tied at the knee. The Dutch are plain and simple in their nays They are sober look ng, but they can laugh upon occasions, and many of them are hospitable More than half the farmers of Holland own the lands which they farm, but the holdinss are comparatively small There are not in the whole country 200 farms each containing more than 260 acres, and 80,000 of the Yarms have each less than fifteen acres. Indeed, a large part of Hol- land is tracts of heath or of swamp and water, which are good for nothing. There are 2,600,000 acres in pasture, and more than 660.000 acrés in forests, so that the land actually cultivated does not comprise more than one-third of the country, The peopie are more devoted to stock farming and” dairying than to tilling the soll. The country raises excellent grass, and there are now here somcthing like 1,500,000 cattle, chiefly Holsteins. There are 1,250,000 hogs, more than 500,000 horses and 750,000 sheep. Some of the chiet dairy regions are in the north, and at Alkmar is a famous cheese market, to which the people from seventy or eighty villages bring in their cheese for sale. BEach cheese is marked with the initials of its maker. The stock is spread out on waxed cloths, and is bought by wholesale merchants, who ship it to all parts of the world. Holland exported about $5,000,000 worth of cheese in 1900, the bulk of the product going to England, Belgium, Germany and France. Thousands of tons of this are sold at Alkmar, the stuff being brought in in wagons over the road, on barges up the canals and by the small farmers in dog carts. The price of cheese makes good or bad times in the dairy regions, and by the rise or fall of a cent or so a pound the farmer is happy or miserable. I am surprised to see how well the Dutch care for their cattle. They treat them like children, and are carefyl that nothing is done to excite or disturl them. On a cold day if in the fields they are blanketed, and when hot the blankets are often kept on as a protection from the flies. The cows are fed in the fielde, and th cing is done in the pasture, the farmers claiming that the animals should not be worried by being driven into the stable. On large farms the milk is collected by wagons, and on the small ones the milkmaids often bring it in themselves, using a yoke which fits over the shoulders, with a bucket hung to each end. In France I found the cattle tied to stakes to keep them from destroying the crops next the pastures. Here in Holland nothing is fethered or watched. There are but few fences, but little canals two or three feet wide take their places. The gate to a field is often a drawbridge, which is let dowu when the animals pass in or out, but at other times remains up. Other bridges have gates built upon them, and it looks funny to see such gates standing here and there alone in the fields. The farmers are cverywhere thrifty. Nothing goes to waste, The haystacks are roofed with boards or thatched in such & way that the thateh can be lowered as the hay is fed out. All woodwork is painted, aud rot and rust are not to be scen. In- deed, the only things that show signs of decay here are the windmills, some of which are hundreds of years old. In some cases these have been replaced by steam or oil engines, but they still do a great deal of pumping and grinding. You see them every- where upon the Dutch landscape; gome are huge affairs with arms thirty or more feet long, and great stone or brick towers rising h:gh atove the rest of the landscape. Many furnish the power fcr grist mills. Some saw lumber and others grind flour and tood for the stock. It takes only two men for a large mill, so that the expense of running is slight. I am told that a large mill costs $1,000 or $2,000, and that the smallcr ones are much moere expensive than the steel structures’ of a similar kind in Amer.ca, The Dutch make money out of gardening and especially flower gardening. They r vegetables and fruits for England, but their peaches and pears lack flavor, though they erc full of juice. They taste to me much like the fruits of Japan which has about the same climate. There are parts of Holland, however, which are just right for flowers. Take the region about Haarlem, where more bulbs are raised than at any place in the world, The soil there is a mixture of scnd and loam, just fitted for the best of tulips, hyacinths and gladioluses. There are syndi- cat»s and individuals at Haarlem who do a big business in bulb raising. They have patches of tulips, hyacinths and other bulbs acres in extent. The hyacinths load the air with their perfume and the flelds are of such colors that in passing through on the railroad at certain times of the year you seem to be traveling over a crazy quilt more gorgeous than any ever put together in reality. There are in all about 2,000 different kinds of tulips raised here, 2,000 varieties of gladioluses and 1,700 hyacinths. The bulbs are planted in trenches, with the large plants in the center and the small ones at the side. The varieties are kept separate, each row being labeled with its own name. The most of the bulbs exported by Hol- land are raised near Haarlem, and this means an amount equal to about $5,000,000 annually, much of which comes from the United States. It was at Haarlem that the best tulips were raised during the great craze, when such bulbs brought their weight in gold. That was about the oniy time that the Dutch lost their heads and went wild over speculation. They speculate still, bul most of their enterprises are on an investment basis. During the tulip craze, along about when Boston was started, one Haarlem tulip bulb brought $1,500, with a team of gray horses and a carriage thrown in, and an Amsterdam bulb was sold for twelve acres of land. Both of these bulbs were of the variety known as the Semper Augustus, of which there were then only two in ex- istence. At the same time other varieties brought enormous sums. Tulip buying was a regular business and men grew rich and poor from the frade. Some Dutch mort- gaged their houses to buy tulips, and the loss of a peck of bulbs caused a man's ruin, The Dutch tulips now sell for ordinary prices, but they are still handled on busi- ness principles, and both cultivation and marketing have been reduced to a science. The bulbs are set out in September and October. They are carefully cultivated by skilled workmen, many of the farms em- ploying hundreds of hands. They are packed for the wmarket just so and are shipped to seed and flower dealers all over the world. I doubt if the ordinary Dutch farmer makes money. Take the 80,000 wLo have less than fifteen acres. They cannot at best produce more than a living. Tndeed, scme of these are selling their farms and renting others. Lands are high and rents are calculated at about 3 per cent of the land values. Wages are very low. A good farmhand can be hired for from 30 to 40 cents a day, (Continued ou Seventh Page.)