Now this is interesting.

Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon, and was the youngest of 10 children; his parents divorced shortly after his birth. 

that infallible source

First of all, he was born in 1852. How common was divorce is 1852? A quick tour of the internet suggests five percent of marriages ended in divorce.

But really? How long does it take to pop out 10 kids? Just thinking through the biology (no one was bottle feeding babies in the 1850s were they?) I’m going to say there’s a 15-18 month interval, so like 11 years. So you and the Missus have been making babies for 11 straight years and then here’s #10 and one of you says, “That’s it. I just can’t take it anymore.”

Or maybe things weren’t going too well from the get-go and one of them says, “Oh, c’mon Honey. Let’s go make a baby. That’ll fix everything.” Repeat X 9. And then Little Charlie (he changed his name as an adult) comes along and they just look each other square in the eye and say, “Well, we gave it our best shot.”

Daily Reading July 7

• Markham’s The Man with the Hoe

Our Pocket Univ. Guide to Daily Reading (1922) tells us the poem was “written after seeing Millet’s painting of the stoopt figure of the Hoe-man.” I see also that the poem has its own page at that infallible source, from which I captured an image of the painting.

The Man with a Hoe has been called “the battle-cry of the next thousand years”^[3] and translated into 37 languages,^[4] earning Markham about $250,000 over 33 years.^[3] After its publication, the poem’s content, form, and language have captured the feelings and thoughts of people, drawing attention to social issues such as labor exploitation while helping causes such as the revitalization of efforts pursuing labor reform.^[5] The poem also helped Markham’s career. The poet became a much sought-after public speaker and his first book of poetry was immediately published to take advantage of the opportunities that became available after the poem established him as one of the American modern poets.^[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Hoe

A quarter of a million dollars. Wonder how much of that went to help the cause?

First stanza:

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
    Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
    The emptiness of ages in his face,
    And on his back the burden of the world.
    Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?