164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and crops, has been maintained since the census of 1870, then 

 the figures will read something like this : — 



Value of live animals, including horses, mules, cattle, 



sheep, and swine 81,942,800,000 



Value of the fences 2,000,000,000 



Value of the annual farm and garden crops grown . 2,820,000,000 



I have shown you how utterly impossible it is for one to 

 comprehend the full significance of these large numbers. 

 Let us reduce them by cutting off the seven right-hand fig- 

 ures, retaining, however, their relative proportions. The 

 statement will now read like this. It requires on an 

 average, throughout the whole of these United States, two 

 dollars' worth of permanent fence to keep one dollar and 

 ninety-four cents' worth of live animals from eating, tram- 

 pling, and destroying two dollars and eighty-two cents' worth 

 of farm and garden products. With such a standard of 

 individual and political economy, is it any thing to wonder 

 at, that a great many men and women in this country work 

 very hard, and have very little to show for it at the end of 

 the year? If political economy is a study too deep to be 

 introduced into our common schools, then is it not high time 

 that the State gave its support to at least one agricultural 

 college where farmers' sons can be instructed in the relation 

 and bearing of such figures ? 



We laugh at the simplicity of the Chinese, who built their 

 single line of stone wall on a border of their territory ; but 

 I fear we are going to make a future generation smile or 

 groan at our foolishness in covering over the face of the 

 whole country with walls and fences like the lines on a 

 checker-board. You may say that these fences are to be 

 viewed in the light of permanent improvements. I cannot 

 accept the proposition. The tendency of the age is to 

 render, sooner or later, nine-tenths of these fences as useless 

 as the Chinese wall, and a public nuisance to which that 

 wonderful piece of masonry is no comparison. It has cost 

 very nearly as much to get rid of the stone walls on the cul- 

 tivated portion of Pine Hedge Farm as the original cost of 

 building them. You may say that these fences are a work 

 of the past, and are not a burden to this generation. Let us 

 see about that. Mr. Orange Judd, about two years ago, pub- 



