398 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



side ill it, and there were 1,000,000 holes by which the members could 

 spy into the celestial vault. There were but a few places in the struc- 

 ture which afforded the shelter from the rain which we had sought, 

 and the farmer kindly threw a blanket over the seat of our carriage to 

 keep it dry. He did hot need nor occupy a fourth part of the space 

 for his half a dozen calves and cows, his small and dirty chaise, his 

 mare and colt and his numerous broods of chickens. 



This withered old barn, a relic of other days, other men, other 

 modes, was a visible commentary upon the remarks of the professor. 

 There was nothing vigorous or hopeful about the place, except a young- 

 bull calf with which the proprietor had a severe tussle in getting him 

 away from his mother. The very spirit of desolation brooded over the 

 scene ; for the last two generations of farmers had been utterly de- 

 feated and laid prostrate by western competition. 



"I tried winter squash," said one of them, "and raised thirty tons. 

 Just as I was getting ready to haul them to market, along came a train 

 full of squashes from Ohio, and knocked down the price to a point that 

 would not pay for hauling." 



And now we hear the western farmers ask, how can we raise grain 

 against the competition of Bombay, with its fertile, boundless plains 

 and teeming millions of laborers which the Suez canal and the freight 

 steamers have put within twenty-two days of London ? I read myself 

 the other day in the London Times a paragraph which mentioned the 

 arrival of a steamer from Bombay containing 5,000 tons of wheat and 

 600 bales of cotton, which had left Bombay twenty-two days before. 

 This prodigious cargo was discharged from the vessel in twenty three 

 hours. 



These are weighty facts. They announce changes in human con- 

 ditions of the most radical nature and widespread extent. The opening 

 of these boundless grain regions of northern India is to the farmers of 

 the west what the train load of squashes was to the Yankee. It noti- 

 fies them that the day is very near when the business of the whole 

 world will form one system, and everything will have to be produced 

 when nature herself has given the hint ; and when, too, all the ligatures 

 of protection will have to be unloosed and business take its natural 

 course everywhere. It announces that our race is going to raise and 

 distribute its daily bread on businesslike and economical principles. 

 The old-fashioned farm is already an obsolete thing, rapidly becoming 

 impossible. Agriculture is about to become a liberal profession, di- 

 rected by intelligence, sustained by capital, and its product distributed 

 with the minimum of waste. Instead of repelling young men, as it now 



