258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



those products to England, and the people there are consnm- 

 ing them ; and they take a great deal of care of the excre- 

 ment, and pass that to their soil. Wliile you are exhausting 

 your soils, you are increasing the. fertility of theirs. You 

 are exporting beef; you are taking nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 

 potash, and other things from jouv soils, and you arc carry- 

 ing them to England for the purpose of feeding her people, 

 and then for the enriching of her soil. When, more than 

 thirty years ago, I came to INIassachusetts, I said, " Massa- 

 chusetts farmers are the poorest farmers in the world." 

 They asked why I made that bold assertion. I said, " They 

 put their privies over the streams and creeks, and let the 

 droppings run to the ocean." In other words, the farmers 

 of Massachusetts at that time were not taking care of those 

 elements of fertility, and giving them back to the land, as I 

 thought they ought to do. I went to the West, and when 

 I got there, and saw the manner in which they were wilfully 

 wasting theb soils, I said, "The farmers of the West are ten 

 times worse than the farmers of Massachusetts: I will go 

 back again." 



There was a time when the Genesee Valley and the 

 Shenandoah Valley were the great wheat-producing valleys 

 of America. Are they producing wheat now ? No, sir. The 

 fertility that caused them to produce their wheat has gone 

 to England. It should have staid here, and would, to a 

 great extent, if we had only taken care, as we ought to have 

 done, of the fertilizing material which came from the con- 

 sumption of that wheat. 



Now, the point I want to make is this : while we are talk- 

 ing of sending off this food material to England, and talldng 

 about the money that is comhig back in the place of it, how 

 much richer are we really making the country by doing it ? 

 We are sending the elements of fertility there. I have won- 

 dered a great many tunes how much real wealth we should 

 have to boast of to-day, if all that fertility had been carried 

 back on those lands of the West and the lands of what 

 we now call the East, and placed in its original condition. 

 Now, Mr. President, it may be a far-sighted matter; but I 

 do not tliink it really enriches any country to export the 

 fertility of its soil. 



The CHATRMAif . I would like to ask the gentleman how 



