Dress, bread baking, coffee drinking and tobacco smoking of the Americans. - High price of drinks. - Dearth of beer brewers. - Fruit harvests. - Apple wine and how it is prepared. - Apple butter from apples. - Success of apples. - Cattle breeding. - Butchering. - Sausage making. - Surfeit of foodstuffs. - Amount of livestock. - The American remains himself master of his possessions as long as he lives. - Indifference of the Germans there toward their newly immigrated countrymen. - Which class of the latter feels the most fortunate there?

The dress of the Americans, as much as I have seen and experienced is, as with us, the common one. One cannot, as with us, distinguish the country person from the city person by his dress. Neither the styles of farmer's clothing here nor those of lesser class persons in our cities does one see there, as little with men as with women. Also the ladies in the cities stand out in almost nothing compared to the wives of rich and well-to-do farmers, except that they might have better curled or styled hair; moreover one sees every newly emerged style of dress in the city after a few weeks also on farmers' wives and their daughters even far in the interior of the country and soon thereafter on the servant girls of the farmers. These latter dress there as the elegant ladies here, about which I was often amazed, especially at church affairs and at festivities. One cannot distinguish the preacher in the country from the farmers by his dress, also not in church prior to his standing in front of the altar or in the pulpit, because country preachers wear no collar, but a percentage of the farmers also wear black clothing as do the preachers and of the same cut.

Of the tasty tables of the Americans I have already spoken occasionally, also of the hospitality of the inhabitants there. The usual rye bread is everywhere so fine and light-colored as our wheat bread; but this latter exceeds everything that I have otherwise yet seen for which the better quality of the grain there as well as, I think, the far better construction of the mills there is the reason.

Bakeries and bake houses there are only in large cities, for in the country as well as in country villages each housewife and her daughters and servant girls understand how to prepare not only bread and cakes of the usual kind, but also other ordinary as well as very sophisticated baked goods themselves, whereto they also accomplish the necessary procedure themselves. At least once every week in every house of an American family of the well-to-do class white bread, several kinds of cake and the like are baked. I also knew farmers there who year in year out had only bread of wheat flour and no rye bread at all baked.

Coffee is drunk not, as with us, at special times, but during the meal; in addition to plate, knife and fork each person is also given a cup with coffee and each one sweetens this as he prefers. One eats and slurps coffee alternately. Of soaking white bread in coffee the American knows nothing. Instead of milk one drinks only sweet cream with coffee.

Tobacco smoking is the fashion everywhere, with men as well as with young women and children also. When young girls go to the dance or for a walk this belongs to their attire, that they have a burning cigar in their mouth. Often I saw children on the street at play, each one with a burning cigar. Three year old boys already smoke like old men. But an outbreak of fire I did not experience during my stay in America in the country. Once during my stay there a fire broke out in Philadelphia. But the fire companies are so excellent that the same was put out again in an altogether short time.

Drinks are four to six times more expensive than here and in the country almost everywhere irresponsibly adulterated. Beer is, proportionately, among all of them the most expensive and the worst and in the summertime almost nowhere to be had; for there are only very few beer brewers and these do not understand how to brew decent beer. Beer brewers here would have a big and profitable business there and perhaps be beneficial to the country dwellers because thereby surely the inordinate consumption of brandy would be lessened, for the American, as far as I have heard, likes to drink beer. For a small glass of beer about as big as those here out of which one drinks the English bottled beer I once had to pay twelve cents (four Ggr.) Every small glass of whisky (ordinary brandy of rye and corn) that costs six pfennig here comes to six cents (two Ggr.) there and the remaining drinks are all more expensive. The cider is indeed the best, most healthful and because each farmer prepares it himself from his abundant fruit also for him the cheapest drink, yet this drink is not very popular with many Americans as one should think; for the American is too very much used to brandy which many also distill themselves, often from apples. At harvest time most all of them drink rum with water.

On every farm one finds a large field with apple trees which are planted in rows and stand ten to fifteen paces distant from one another. They give the farmer year round a rich harvest of apples from which many kegs full of juice are pressed. Of this juice, after it has properly fermented, the farmer sells many kegs to the city people, as well as to the merchants and innkeepers in the country. The merchants in the port cities send it in great amounts to South America, the East and West Indies, also frequently to Europe. The farmer distills brandy from the not completely ripened and bad apples. Of this brandy which has the characteristic of keeping the apple juice clear and sweet for a very long time three to four gallons are added to every barrel or cask of the same which is to be kept good and sweet for a long time. A barrel or cask contains thirty-two gallons. Cider thus mixed with brandy is then called cider royal. A barrel of the fresh cider costs about two dollars without being mixed with brandy. Instead of apple brandy one can mix the fresh cider also with rum, whisky or gin of which one uses less. If one wants to give this drink a full wine taste, then one puts several squeezed high ripe wine grapes into the barrel.

The apples are first ground into a pulp in a mill especially adapted for that. The mill is usually set into motion by a horse. When one is finished with the grinding then the pulp which up to then was put in troughs and tubs goes into the press which likewise is built for this express purpose. First one puts down a layer of straw thus, so that it stands up around the edges. Onto this one pours pulp about a quarter ell high, bends the upward standing straw inward over the same and puts a new layer of straw onto it; onto this then apple pulp again and the straw bent in again and this is repeated three to four times. Then it is pressed; one first lets the cider run into the tubs set under the press in which it settles and then puts it into barrels in which it ferments several days. Then one taps it into barrels that are well rinsed and scalded with hot water without bunging them so that the apple wine can still continue fermenting several days longer. Only then can one bung them after one has added the whisky to those barrels that are designated for long reservation. This juice can be drunk fresh right away, it tastes sweet and pleasant. But if it is mixed with whisky, rum or something else and is a good half year old, I would rather drink it than any wine; it is an excellent drink. Ten bushels of apples yield a barrel of juice there.

Out of apples the American women also cook excellent apple buter (called Latwerge). At the time of cider making in the fall they peel a large amount of apples, cut them in half and free them of the seeds and their cores. These apple schnitz are cooked in apple juice twelve to eighteen hours long and during the cooking stirred as plum butter with us. This apple butter can be kept for many years and improves with age. It is spread onto bread and excels in taste and quality by far our best plum butter.

In the event that someone here who harvests fruit in quantities had the desire to make use of cider making, I brought with me from America a small wooden model after which any skilled carpenter is in a position to pattern in life size the apple mill and press there.

In America especially the apples and peaches grow better than here and are also of better quality; pears, however, do not do half as well and plums almost not at all. The fruit there is not destroyed by caterpillars, although at the time of spring especially the apple trees are often completely covered with caterpillar nests and swarm with caterpillars so that one should think that leaves as well as blossoms would be completely destroyed by them. After a short time I found them all dead in their nests without having done the leaves any particular damage. The night frosts in the spring do not harm the fruit there as easily as here and on mountains and elevations not at all. For this reason one establishes the fruit gardens, or better the fruit fields, where it can be done, only at or on mountains. Places of ten to twenty acres of land are often completely planted with apple trees. The land on which these trees stand is planted, just as the remaining, with grain and other fruits which also grow very well, only with the single difference that they ripen somewhat later

The American in the country maintains considerable cattle breeding and butchers many of the same for use in his household, for he does not have a meal without several kinds of meat on the table which is usually done in butter. The meat of the pigs there is altogether excellently well-tasting, it excels ours by far; the reason for it is none other than the corn with which they are all fattened there. Also the eggs of the feathered animals there excel those of ours in quality and good taste for just the same reason. It is strange that there one eats no raw ham, bacon, Mett, knock and blood sausages and also no lard with bread. This latter is indeed used in the baking of white bread, also frequently burned in lamps instead of oil; the fat of beef (tallow), however, is used only in cooking soap and in lighting. When the American butchers pigs he lets all the blood run into the manure. Three times I had pigs butchered and could never move the butcher to make me a blood sausage. I urged him to do it every time, but every time his answer was: "Phooey! Who can fress blood? That would be grisly!" To make sausage the butcher has a tin or pewter instrument almost like our clisters with a rod; with this he clisters the intestine full. Such an instrument as the butchers use here to make sausage one does not know and for this reason one also knows nothing of Schlack and Mett sausages. One makes a great amount of frying sausages and when these are eaten up one butchers again.

Because the farmer there has an abundance of foodstuffs there is also much that is not bothered with and thrown away that could and should still be very well put to use. Thus, for example, the ears, feet, legs and snouts of the slaughtered animals, pigs, and heads and feet of beef as well as many other parts of the slaughtered animals are immediately thrown to the dogs. The nice meat broth is often poured out into the wash tubs or even into the drain hole. The thick milk that is used here for cheese is all poured to the pigs on many farms.

On an average farm of about 100 to 150 acres of land one keeps about four horses, for the American, with just as much land, can exist with totally the half of these animals that are necessary here, because he has all of his land near to the door and does no work for the nobility. Further one keeps twenty to thirty head of beef among which are about ten or twelve milk-giving cows; thirty to forty pigs, twenty to thirty sheep that are not milked, for which reason they get much bigger than ours, for the lambs nurse so long until they stop by themselves and they have pasture there in great abundance. The American in the country does not eat mutton, nor does it taste as good a ours. He keeps them only to get as much wool as he needs for his household; the excess he sells to the city people who eat the mutton for health reasons. Feathered stock the farmer keeps in a very large amount, often well nigh 200 chickens, for a roasted chicken has to be included almost daily on his table; of turkeys he has 100 or close to it, guinea hens (called China hens) about twenty to thirty. Of geese he keeps fifteen to twenty only for sake of the feathers, for he has an aversion to the meat of the same. Peacocks he keeps for show, constantly six to ten. Thus it is in the populated regions of Pennsylvania, especially in Berks County where I lived. The regions, however, are very varied.

In the country it is not the custom that the parents surrender and transfer the farm to one of their children and maintain a share for themselves. Such a case might happen extremely seldom. There are, however, many examples of this, that the farmer leases his children the plantations ("loans out" one says there), moves into a city and leads a carefree life. However, he remains the owner of his possessions as long as he lives and when he dies then his children all get an equal share of the estate of the old man. The collective possessions are inventoried and whoever of the children comes into possesion of the goods has to pay the others their share in cash, or the possession are sold to strangers and the heirs divide the money. Marrying into estates with a sum of money is not the custom. So far as I have found, in marrying nothing is asked about money and goods, each one chooses the person who pleases him and is held back through nothing in this if she wants him.

With many Germans who have come to well being there, all loyalty to the country of their birth and all memories of the fatherland appear to be extinguished, especially however if they came there as children. These people often do not know of which German state, even less of which city or of which village they are native. It is with the greatest indifference that such persons often greet the newly arrived countryman. If the Germans there hold together, then it is more out of an outward necessity than out of a vestige of love for the fatherland. Distrust, coldness and aloofness prevail among the Germans in general, but mostly among the well-to-do in large cities.

The ignorant, immigrant south German farmer and tradesman feels fortunate there especially because he can live comfortably and with less work nevertheless earn far more than here, especially because he is free of levies and can eat meat three times every day; further, because he does not have to take off his hat for anyone which was always a great burden for him here. But it suits him very specially that he does not need to send his children to school and that these are nevertheless confirmed as soon as he desires it even if they are still so rough and ignorant. Of the deprivations that an educated person feels there, at least in the beginning, such a one knows little or nothing at all.Source: Edited by Bryan Wright