PROSPECTS OP AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. £39 



THE PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



By Joseph Harris. 



Read at tho Session of the National Agricultural Congress, at Philadelphia, Sept. 1876. 



I have been asked to write a short paper on the prospects of 

 American Agriculture. I did not select the subject myself. I 

 am not a prophet or the son of a prophet, and can only judge of 

 the future from the past and the tendencies of the present. 



To me the signs of the times are favorable and the prospects 

 bright. Given a soil in the same condition and with a similar 

 season, no one, I think, will dispute the assertion that a given 

 amount of time and labor will produce more wheat, barley, oats, 

 corn, hay, roots, clover and grass seed ; more cotton, rice, hemp, 

 flax and tobacco ; and more beef, mutton, wool, pork, milk, but- 

 ter and cheese to-day than it would 25, 50, or 100 years ago. 



And the same is true, as a rule, of the articles for which a 

 farmer wishes to exchange his surplus products. A given amount 

 of time and labor will produce more and better implements and 

 machines ; more woolen, linen and cotton cloth ; more boots, shoes, 

 stockings and gloves ; more pins, needles, buttons and thread. 



The same amount of labor will dig more coal, iron and silver, 

 and will saw and plane more boards, and give us more nails, ham- 

 mers, glass, putty and paint ; will give us more furniture for our 

 houses, and more and better light, and more, if not better, books, 

 papers and pictures. In short, owing to the discoveries of science, 

 to increased skill, and to mechanical and chemical inventions, a 

 given amount of labor will produce more of the necessaries and 

 luxuries of life which a farmer needs to procure in exchange for 

 his farm products than it would 25, 50 or 100 years ago. 



So far as material prosperity is concerned, therefore, we are, as 

 a nation, or a community of nations, better off than we were 25, 

 50, or 100 years ago. We need not work so hard, or, if we work 

 as hard, we can have more of the necessaries and luxuries of life. 

 I am speaking now of all classes. 



But, of course, it does not necessarily follow that one class iu 

 exchanging its products for the products of another class gets, at 

 all times, a fair and just equivalent. And no acts of legislation 



