WATER AS AN AGRICULTURAL AGENT. 3Q9 



out that rninoiis toll which transportation and middle men are tak- 

 ing. With the existing condition of things, much of what is 

 written or spoken to encourage agriculture in our State, is like 

 sowing seed in the wind. When it will pay, men will learn to 

 farm, will heed fitly uttered thoughts, will prize the. aids of science, 

 will lend a helping and willing hand to elevate the standard of 

 farming. To stop the consumptive tendancy of our farming and 

 ward ofl" a further decline, we have but one hope, and one remedial 

 agent — the " loater-cure.'^ 



With an inland sui-face of 3,000 square miles of water — with more 

 than 1,000 lakes feeding innumerable outlets — with numberless 

 streams, the most of which are to-day, as through all time past they 

 have been, through courses circuitous or direct, over pitch and fall 

 and cataract, tumbling, foaming, falling their immense water power 

 wastefully to the sea. These neglected waters annually deliver one 

 and a quarter trillions cubic feet per day, and in their passage to 

 the sea pass over more than 3,000 mill privileges and factory sites, 

 and in their descent yield 2,656,000 horse-powers, equivalent to the 

 working energy of 34,000,000 men. 



The present age has witnessed vast improvements in many of the 

 outward things which concern life, from intercourse as rapid as 

 lightning, to surgical operations without pain. But, to confine 

 these millions of escaping " horse-powers," that with the force of 

 their own gravity they may act as useful agents of industry, would' 

 be the supremacy of achievement. While this gigantic motor is 

 unemployed, our agriculture with all the refreshing showers of the • 

 early and latter rains will continue to languish, our forms become • 

 asylums to hide ou.r poverty and solitude ; our census returns con- 

 tinue to show a constant exodus of young men, the wave of emi- 

 gration pouring itself through every avenue of business into the 

 cities, or surging toward the wheat fields of the great West, or the 

 gold mines of California and Monta;na. The market will continue 

 to be glutted with farms, the owners of which desire to drift into 

 fortunes elsewhere, and the agricultural improvement and growth 

 of the State will become as fixed and stationary as the snags in 

 the beds of the rivers that flow at our feet. 



Reverse the order of things — when these neglected sites will be 

 utilized, works constructed on a scale to employ the stout arms of> 

 willing laborers — then our farmers may stand at the door of the 

 bread-room to weigh out to each his loaf, and our agricultural capa- 

 24 



