From the October 16, 1931 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

The haze of summer is gray, but the haze of October is white. It is in the air in the morning. A few weeks, perhaps a few days, later it will be frost; but now it is white vapor, exhaled from the earth and from the waters around the earth. These October mornings, often, are tranquil beyond the tranquility even of summer. The air is not only clear and quiet but also cool, freed of the vexations of the warmer months, not yet charged with the cruelty of the colder months. October days begin with this haze and this tranquility are days of immeasurable distances; the horizon is pushed back, even the sky seems a more lofty vault. The air becomes, in a real sense, a medium in which we move and live; it caresses and surprises all our sense.

But October is also a month of great gusts and whistling winds, often rising suddenly out of her perfect peace. At night the shutters rattle and there is a booming in the chimneys. At daybreak the sea emerges a deeper blue than it has ever been before, but broken by unnumbered crests of pure white wave. The cold in the air seems strange and penetrating, because it is the first real cold of the autumn; but it invites retaliation and soon the human organism has made terms with it, the blood coursing through the veins, the face tingling pleasantly. October is invigorating. And after these gusts and this cold are over she may be tranquil again, though not, perhaps, as warm as before.

Martha’s Vineyard has increased her population lately at a great rate. The number of births at the hospital has excited pleasant comment. On they come, this new generation of Vineyarders, under the best possible auspices. Someone wonders, however, what these babies are going to do with their lives when they are grown. Are they to spend only their childhood and youth on the Vineyard, then to emigrate to the mainland to find jobs and homes?

The truth is that if this recent company of infants were of an age at the present time to begin life’s work in earnest, they would find themselves in a puzzling predicament. There is, of course, little to invite them to the mainland of this or any other country, for the great depression is world wide. But there is almost as little to invite them to stay on the Vineyard. Summer is over. Our own great industry is at a standstill until preparations for another season begin. Our other great industry, fishing, offers plenty of opportunities, but not everyone feels the call of the sea in just this way.

If the young people growing up on the Island have talent or inclination for the professions, there is certainly a field here for them. We have had cause for complaint in recent years that Martha’s Vineyard has ceased to provide her own professional men; the complaint lies against the Island’s youth simply on the ground of neglected opportunity. But if the young people do not discover for themselves some mission in life to be undertaken here, the only alternative is for the Island to bring forth new opportunities to keep her young at home.

Now and then someone hopes that there will be a new industry on the Vineyard for just this purpose; to make it possible for those who love the Island to live here. It is hardly to be conceived that we should ever wish to turn to any industrialism in the modern sense. Rather it is natural to look for an extension of industries we have to make a place for the young of the Island.

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In the detailed reports now being published to embody the results of the census last year there are some interesting figures. Statistics for Massachusetts covering agriculture by counties have just appeared. One discovers that in Dukes County only seven farms reported cultivation of the grape. These seven farms reported only twenty-three vines of bearing age under cultivation, and only 1,910 pounds of grapes harvested in 1929, the year before the census.

Only three Vineyard cranberry bogs under cultivation were reported, amounting to twenty-three acres, a small fraction of the land valuable for the purpose which was formerly so used. In 1929 we produced, the census bulletin says, 14,250 quarts of cranberries. Cranberries were formerly an important source of income to Islanders, and the might be today. Of course the marketing conditions may be discouraging over long periods of time, but it is a cause for real regret that this picturesque form of agriculture, so peculiarly adapted to our marsh lands, and to which Vineyarders have always been so adapted, should decline and pass from the scene.

The roll of orchard crops as well as of field crops shows Martha’s Vineyard very little concerned. In dairying alone do we assume any sort of importance, and this fact may be taken to increase our interest in encouraging and preserving the dairy farms here.

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox

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