1857.] The Claims of Agrictilhirc^ etc. 483 



For the last few years petition after petition has been carried up to 

 Congress from the people; Agricultural Societies, County and State, 

 and United States have been formed, and passed resolutions recom- 

 mending the establishment of an agricultural department at Wash- 

 ington, but our last Congress thought that the continuance even of 

 a committee on the subject of Agriculture was uncalled for, and in 

 their loisdom discontinued its appointment. We shall endeavor in 

 our remaining remarks to show the claims of this giant interest to 

 national and State patronage, and the grounds upon which such 

 claims are based. These claims are founded upon considerations of a 

 physical and intellectual nature, while these again ramify throughout 

 our political, moral and social relations, indeed forming the very 

 basis of our individual and national prosperity. To such considera- 

 tions, important as is our destiny all should lend a listening ear. 



First, in a physical point of view then ; our agriculture has its 

 claims to national favor and protection from the wanton waste and 

 impoverishment of the soil under cultivation. Let our older States 

 speak on this subject, let the voice of Massachusetts, indeed the en- 

 tire New England six be heard. In some of them the great cereal, 

 wheat, is now quite driven out, and in others it has ceased to be re- 

 munerative. In 1840, by the census report, Connecticut produced 

 eighty-seven thousand bushels of wheat, in 1850, forty-one thousand 

 bushels. Massachusetts, in 1840, one hundred and fifty seven thou- 

 sand nine hundred and twenty-three, in 1850, but thirty-one thou- 

 sand two hundred and eleven. Rhode Island once famed for the 

 fertility of her soil, produced but three thousand and ninety-eight 

 bushels in 1850. 



By statistics collected and published by the commissoner of Pat- 

 ents, we find that in the great State of New York, while the number 

 of acres of land in cultivation has vastly increased, the agricultural 

 products have decreased. The number of horses, cows and swine dur- 

 ing a period of five years had decreased from fifteen to twenty per 

 cent., and the number of sheep nearly fifty per cent., while the agri- 

 cultural products have by no means increased in corresponding ratio. 

 Indeed the wheat crop has been reduced in its average from fifteen 

 and twenty bushels per acre to less than twelve. And there is the 

 same general tendency in all the wheat and grain growing regions 

 of the West and South. Deteriorations of soil, and diminution of 

 crops may be said to be a general law of American agriculture. lu 



