PRACTICAL HINTS ON FARMING. 33 



We must, by precept and example, teach them to ignore 

 prejudice, however sanctified by habit, and to avail them- 

 selves of every improvement which this progressive age 

 invents or discovers. 



How destructive to manufacturing progress would be that 

 sjDirit which ignores the inventions and discoveries of the day, 

 and how fatal to the manufacturer who should persist in using 

 old and exploded machinery and reject new processes and 

 textures in cotton and woollen fabrics. 



To compete, the manufacturer must not only be in the 

 market with new fabrics in style and material to suit the 

 necessities and even the whims of his customers, but he must 

 be on the alert to avail himself of every improvement which 

 science and invention discover or invent to cheapen or 

 facilitate production ; and the failure of nine-tenths of these 

 does not discourage him from trying the next which offers. 

 Formerly, large herds of cattle were essential appendages to 

 a manufactory for producing the necessary amount of cow- 

 dung to be used for the bleaching and dyeing processes of 

 cotton cloth. The fortunate discovery of a chemical salt 

 which performed the same functions cheaper and in a more 

 cleanly manner, enables the manuficturer to dispense with 

 the cows. The non-progressive spirit of agriculture would 

 have used the cow-dung to this day, on the same principle as 

 it ignores the application of cheap and condensed fertilizers, 

 and persists in carting out forty loads of crude manure from 

 the barn -yard, which modern agricultural chemistry shows to 

 be equivalent to but one load of fertilizing material. Chemists 

 all agree that in a ton of barn-yard manure all but ninety 

 pounds is water, so that we cart out and handle nineteen 

 hundred and ten pounds of water to get ninety pounds of 

 fertilizer, as a tribute to the practice of our agricultural 

 ancestors, a reverence for antiquity not shared by our manu- 

 facturers. 



The great want of our agricultural interests is schools for 

 practical education, directed to the special cultivation of 

 farmers. The schools of design elevated the manufactures 

 of England, and have measurably made them rivals in taste 

 and cheapness of their French competitors in the markets of 

 the world, and our own progressive manufacturers have 

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