96 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



those who come from the wheat field, and the holding of the 

 plow ; men of determined purpose and stern integrity, disci- 

 plined in the school of hard labor, self-denial, and, it maybe, 

 of poverty. General prosperity has always followed the 

 equal and harmonious development of all industries. Agri- 

 culture is the most remunerative, when flanked by a success- 

 ful commerce and profitable manufactures. But, back in the 

 past, men from the farm began to seek the city in order to 

 engage in speculative effort, or to find a business better suited 

 to their tastes. For a time agriculture did not suffer from 

 this exodus of its men and women ; and the cities were to 

 a great extent benefitted and made better. It will be found, 

 however, from a close inspection of the problem, that the 

 disproportion between producers and consumers consequent 

 upon the rapid increase in the population of our cities at the 

 expense of the country, is one of the leading causes — though 

 somewhat remote — for the present condition of society repre- 

 sented in the phrase of " hard times." The forsaken country 

 houses and deserted hill-side farms, which tell plainly of over- 

 crowded tenement houses in the poorer quarters of our cities 

 — for it is simply impossible to believe that all the men who 

 leave the farm for the city become rich — tell also, without 

 the aid of census estimates, that the number of persons who 

 get their living by farming, has been, and is, growing less 

 and less year by year. In the new States of the West, it is 

 noticeable that there has been during the last decade a great 

 and constantly increasing disproportion between producers 

 and consumers. Between 1860 and 1870 the increase in the 

 population of California was 48 per cent., while for the same 

 period the increase in the city of San Francisco was 162 per 

 cent. So, also, for the same years, Illinois as a State in- 

 creased at the rate of 47 per cent., and the city of Chicago 

 increased 105 per cent. The increase of city population as 

 against country population in our own State, though not as 

 marked as in the case of some of the newer States, is yet of 

 the same nature. 



