302 



when his products have to be shipped East, he will make more when he and the 

 manufacturer escape the charges and profits of merchants, on the two transporta- 

 tions for all the domestic goods needed in the West. 



Any thing like a steady or rehable Foreign demand for our surplus grain, 

 at rates that will pay the producer, is now admitted to be a practical illu- 

 sion. And, I must confess, that it always appeared to me bad management, 

 for farmers at least, to purchase ten dollars' worth of goods, and pay only 

 eight in the products of our farms; it appears to me, that as a matter of 

 " exchange," this also is an illusory speculation, and one that reflects very little 

 credit upon the shrewdness of the " calculating Yankee nation ;" though I ques- 

 tion not, that our merchants find their account all right in the matter never- 

 theless. 



But I am only a home-bred farmer, writing for farmers ; and I cannot be con- 

 sidered as much of a political economist, or logician either; and yet, as this 

 subject comes home to the farmer in more ways than one, I should not be 

 justified in leaving it untouched, when I feel assured that the statements of poli- 

 ticians, as to the prospects of a foreign demand for bread stutfs, have had much 

 to do with the present condition of agriculture in Northern Illinois. 



Yet there are other reasons why we have sown wheat — and one of them a 

 potent reason — few of us have known what else to do. Many who have seen 

 the losing game of wheat culture have been unable to purchase stock; and, 

 since the fencing of the prairies, in many places, have feared that there would 

 not be a ranire for herds and flocks. 



This is all very natural under the circumstances, and yet is the effect of igno- 

 rance — mere empirics — we know nothing of farming as a science. If all these 

 farmers in Northern Illinois who have sown wheat for the last five years, because 

 they did not know what else to do, had been educated for their profession, they 

 would have had stock enough to-day ; and would find plenty of room on their 

 farms for the animals best suited to them ; or to their own tastes in the matter 

 of stock-growing and its concomitants. 



Horses and mules for a Southern market; butter, cheese, beef, pork and wool, 

 for East and South ; and even a foreign market for some — are all more certainly 

 remunerating, and more easily produced than wheat. But we must know how 

 to do it right, or we shall not fully succeed in any one thing undertaken, and 



certainly not in several conjoined, which is the only safe way for us to make 

 money. 



Farmers lack science — they need a practical agricultural education as much as 



doctors of medicine the aid of colleges and hospitals — and without a specific 



education (and how many have it ?) the farmer is just as much of a quacK\ as 



the man who practises medicine because he is a " seventh son," or has learned, 



