188 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



worn out, and that the inferior were not brought into cultivation. 

 Here was little motive for preserving the one, or reclaiming 

 the other. 



Now it is different. Our dependence on foreign manufacturers 

 is partially shaken off. American ingenuity and energy is fur- 

 nishing a portion of our manfactured goods. A home market is 

 furnished. The farmer is receiving something for his labor, as 

 well as the lawyer who writes a dun for his special benefit. We 

 are approaching that state of things, slowly but sui-ely, when the 

 working men of the country, those who create all its wealth, will be 

 so justly distributed between the field and shop, the one furnishing 

 the food and raw material, the other turning out the manufactured 

 article, that the different classes, the farmer on the one hand and 

 the manufacturer on the other, will mutually sustain each other. 

 For the last three years, agricultural produce has perhaps been 

 as high as it is desirable that it should be. May it never be 

 lower. The poor even — those who are willing to be industrious, 

 would not be benefited by reducing it. But our only hope, that 

 agricultural produce will remain sufficiently high to fairly reward 

 the labors of the husbandman, lies in the expectation that 

 at no distant day, we shall have a full supply of iron, steel 

 and hardware, of cutlery and mechanics' tools, of clothing, 

 of whatever we need, out of our own soil and mines, in our own 

 shops, by our own laborers, fed to the full on the produce of our 

 own farmers. This and nothing else will secui'e stable, permanent 

 prosperity to the great Agricultural interest of the country. 

 When the wheels turn by the weight of every tumbling stream, 

 and the shops sing all over the land there will be somebody to 

 •consume the farmers' produce, and to pay him for it. 



The subject in hand naturally divides itself into two parts : — 

 1st. — The position or present state of American Agriculture. 

 2d. — Its prospects. 



Of the present state of American agriculture, it is safe to say, 

 that it is a vast improvement on anything past in this country. 

 Half a century ago it had sunk to a pitiably low condition. 

 Some of the causes have been already alluded to. Owing to an 

 abject colonial dependence, the farmer had scarcely a home cus- 

 tomer. His only resource was to let go of a prodigious amount 

 of his own productions for a precious little of any thing else that 



