CHANGES IN FARMING. 



341 



must be permanently as well as temporarily employed ; and all 

 these are the customers of the farmer — not his competitors. 



If we can have plenty of such customers what matters it if the 

 Western States continue to supply them with a portion of their 

 corn and flour and meat? Can we not sell enough of potatoes 

 and beets and onions and cabbages and turnips and hay and milk 

 and butter and cheese and fresh beef and fat mutton and lambs and 

 poultry and eggs and garden vegetables and fruits and a thousand 

 things, which, if those beyond our borders attempt to compete in 

 at all, it must be at such disadvantage that we are sure of fair 

 returns for home productions ? There are not a few articles, and 

 they embrace nearly all the most remunerative farm and garden 

 products, which our farmers can always furnish, if they will set 

 themselves to do it, any of which find, in their weight, or bulk or 

 perishable nature, protection enough to insure reasonable profits 

 from their judicious culture. They are protected by an enactment 

 of the Most High in his providential arrangements — a tariff which 

 neither Parliament, nor Congress, nor the People themselves can 

 repeal, nullify or tamper with. 



A diversified agriculture and horticulture, such as large home 

 markets would create, would furnish far greater security against 

 bad seasons than does our present method, for it would necessitate 

 a higher and deeper, a better and richer culture, and this of itself 

 is a pretty good insurance against such casualties. How was it 

 last yearlmd the year before when the drought pinched severely ? 

 Was it the deeply cultivated, well enriched fields which suffered 

 most? Nay, verily! 



It is by virtue of home markets that the agriculture of Great 

 Britain has come to be what it is — the best in the world; — and not 

 mainly by reason of naturally rich land, not because of the pos- 

 session of great breadths of unexhausted prairies, ready to give up 

 their virgin riches to little and careless culture, with no thought 

 for manure. Not at all. It is her home markets which enables 

 her to expend abundant labor, and to send to the ends of the earth 

 for fertilizing substances, and not only for what is to be directly 

 applied to the land as manure, either before or after undergoing a 

 process of manufacture; she imports also vast quantities of con- 

 centrated cattle foods, primarily" for the manufacture of milk and 

 meat, and incidentally to increase fertilization. 



Englishmen, of all men, are most eloquent in setting forth the 

 beauties and benefits of free trade. When they attained to such 



