FARM FI'NCES. 



243 



It would not appear to an}' one familiar with past discussions on 

 this subject that this is because our farmers have been told of no 

 other way. The "no fence" argument, and to a moderate degree 

 the no fence practice in the open field, has been given an ample and 

 ably presented share in your State discussions and individual ex- 

 periences. The strong and earnest advocac\' of the practice of 

 soiling cattle, which stimulated the discussion of the fence question 

 in JNlaine Keports 1859 and 18G0, has still its representatives whose 

 views are to be respected. But the American farmer is not read}-, 

 has not been ready for the modes of culture practiced on the conti- 

 nent of Europe, where the home of the American farmer and the 

 aspects of American farm life are unknown. 



The S3'stems of agriculture of France and German}^ so gloriousl}'^ 

 praised bj' theoretical writers, many of whoin have no practical 

 connection with the question of fencing, furnish no example Amer- 

 icans or Englishmen at home or in Canadian or Australian Colonies 

 would be willing to see reproduced among them. 



Says Dr. Loring, United States Commissioner of Agriculture, in 

 his recent paper on American Landholding : 



"It is true that French farmers are citizens of a Republic and are owners of the 

 soil on which they live, but it is a Republic without the traditions of Freedom; a soil 

 divided among them by violence before they had reached the point of citizenship. 

 There the home of the American farmer is not found. The American farmhouse is 

 almost unknown. The peasantry gather for the night into crowded towns away from 

 their lands, and go forth by day to till their few outlying acres." (Problem of 

 American Landholding, 1881.) 



We shall never find the peasant farmer at home on American soil. 

 We shall never find a class of cowherds in our villages. We shall 

 never shelter our farm beasts on "the European plan," under the 

 same roof with their owners. 



True, all this is not involved in soiling, but it is a part of the 

 same S3stem, enforced by doing away with fenced enclosures. 

 Neither Belgium nor France can give us examples. Belgium has 

 three hundred persons to the square mile. France has two hundred, 

 and by French division of propert}' in descent the farm land is 

 divided into patrimonies from a few acres down to a few rods 

 square. And this is un-American. 



Discussing the sulyect in 1803, in Iowa, with its rapidly filling 

 territory under vast pressure for fencing under conditions that have 

 always made fences costly and troublesome, (fences in Iowa in 1879 

 cost nearly five millions of dollars) and where the no-fence theory 



