PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURE. 5 



improved. Though starting out hand in hand their relations 

 aro now changed. Commerce has stepped in and separated 

 them, and offers to each the opportunity of buying and selling 

 in the best markets without regard to each other. The man- 

 ufacturer employs the merchant to buy and to sell ; the farmer, 

 except in a small way, does the same. If the manufacturer 

 goes abroad for wool, so the American cheese farmer has become 

 enabled to excel the English and Dutch, and to beat them in 

 their own markets and on their own ground. The Kentucky 

 stock breeder sends improved Durhams back to England. The 

 greatly improved and extended system of transportation has 

 broken up monopolies and equalized prices. It has brought the 

 cheap lands of the West in competition with the higher-priced 

 lands of the Eastern States. It has brought the comparatively 

 cheap lands of the interior into competition with the more 

 costly lands lying near large cities. The difference in the cost 

 of production being greater than the charge of transportation, 

 it follows that you cannot compete with those who produce 

 cheaper than you do. Hence New England farmers can no 

 longer profitably grow wool, or beef, or pork, or wheat for the 

 manufacture of flour. But they can safely raise grass and 

 hay, rye, oats and buckwheat, potatoes, and perhaps corn, milk, 

 butter and cheese, poultry, mutton and veal, a, variety of veg- 

 etables, and some species of fruit. 



The Western farmer, on his cheap but fertile lands, will 

 raise wheat and corn, beef and pork and fruit with less capital 

 and less cost of labor than you can in New England. He can 

 live cheaper, and the laboring man can buy more food with 

 his wages than he can in New England. But the Western 

 farmer has a great many trials and drawbacks. He is often 

 remote from all the comforts of civilized life. In a country that 

 is sparsely populated, he is sometimes without a market for his 

 produce. He at times struggles with poverty and sickness, and 

 his family are sometimes beyond the reach of schools and 

 churches. There are many exceptional cases. I have known 

 corn consumed for fuel. I have myself seen a wheat crop 

 entirely consumed by the cost of threshing alone. I have 

 known corn abandoned to the tenant because its value in mar- 

 ket was not equal to the cost of transportation. I have seen 

 whole fields of corn and wheat standing through the winter 



