54 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



object, regardless of all other considerations, yet taking these latter 

 into account, the decision is unanimous. One correspondent says : 



" It may be the better policy for a temporary purpose, to adopt an exhaust- 

 ive system of farming, just as a man hiring a horse for a d;iy, may find it more 

 profitable to work him without food or rest, but there is neither honesty nor 

 economy in the long run, and the man who would do either, has neither care 

 for his own interest nor conscience for that of others." 



Another -writes as follows : 



" This question covers a broad field, though the word ' pecuniary' somewhat 

 limits its area. If taking from the land all that nature gave it and then 

 abandoning it, is good policy in one place, it must be in others, and thus in 

 the end good policy would lead to exliausting all the earth and leaving it a 

 barren waste, incapable of producing food for man. This policy, we of Maine, 

 have been practicing for years. The farmers of the south have pursued the 

 same policy to a greater extent, and the farmers of the fertile west, on a still 

 grander scale, are using up* the deposits of food for man and beast which 

 nature for ages has been storing up. That these efforts to exhaust the soil of 

 the north, the south and the west, have been eminently successful, the statis- 

 tics of the country clearly show. Without going to other countries for exam- 

 ples to prove that this result is not necessary — that land may be profitably 

 cultivated not only witliout being exhausted, but with increasing power of 

 production, we can find them in every neigliborhood. Every farmer, if he 

 examines hi^own practice and experience, will see that his greatest profits are 

 derived from some small part of his farm which receives better treatment than 

 the rest. If then, this exhaustion of soil is not necessary, if good culture pays 

 best, why practice it here or elsewhere? Is it wise to waste or destroy, for a 

 small present saving, that which would in the future yield constant returns 1 

 Rather would not true policy, no less than philanthropy and justice, dictate 

 a course of culture which would improve instead of exhausting our fiums 1 



That tliis may be done, is abundantly proved by examples all around us, 

 and still more by examples abroad, (you have the accounts of the enormous 

 crops of wheat, &c., in England, Holland, &c.) One farm in this immediate 

 vicinity, I have in my mind, of not more than forty acres of mowing and tillage, 

 which by the policy I would advocate, now produces, (this year,) more than 



* A recent editorial in the " Wisconsin Farmer," contains the foUowing : " The 

 only difference is that the east is alrcTcly skinned, and the west is being skinned — 

 not slowly, either, but as much faster than were the eastern States as steam and 

 telegraph have quickened the spirit of the age. The easier and faster modes of 

 cultivation, the reaper, the threshing machine, the railroads, are only so many 

 additional helpers and accessories to the more rapid tlcplction of the soil of the fer- 

 tile virgin prairies of the west." And again—" Nine tenths, at least, of Wisconsin 

 farms are Icing skinned as fast as sharp knives and folly can do it." 



