1856.] Our Present System of Agriculture, Sfc. 



OUR PRESENT SYSTEM OF AGRI C U LT UR E — ITS 

 DEFECTS AND REMEDIED 



A CORRECT system of agriculture lies at the very basis of our national 

 prosperity. In whatever light we view it, our sense of its importance is 

 continually increased and strengthened. In its social, political, and moral 

 bearing, in its connection with the subsistence of mankind, with their 

 general comfort, and with the progress of civilization, no subject more 

 demands the attention of the political economist, the statesman, and the 

 philanthropist. 



In these United States agi'iculture gives employment to more capital, 

 and to more labor, than all the other pursuits combined. With its pro- 

 gress is identified every important interest of our country. 



It becomes then an important problem, in what manner this paramount 

 interest is to be sustained and its permanent prosperity secured. 



Before the discussion of this question we would advert to some of the 

 results that have followed, and that must inevitably continue to follow, 

 our present mode of tillage— results which are now being fully realized 

 in many once fertile portions of our country. Liebig says of Virginia, 

 ^'Harvests of wheat and tobacco were obtained, for a century, from one 

 and the same field, without the aid of manure ; but now whole districts 

 are converted into pasture land which, without manure, produces neither 

 wheat nor tobacco." " From every acre of this land there were removed, 

 in the space of one hundred years, twelve hundred pounds of alkalies, in 

 -leaves, grain, and straw." 



• The soil in parts of Pennsylvania and Xew York, where formerly large 

 crops of wheat were grown, is now incapable of producing this cereal, and 

 the yield per acre is yearly diminishing throughout the State. The same 

 is true even in this comparatively new and fertile State — the average 

 yield per acre having been reduced from twenty-six to fourteen and fifteen 

 bushels, the highest in any county being but twenty-two bushels, and 

 a number falling even below six bushels. 



To compel the earth to produce the largest return with the least pos- 

 sible outlay of time and labor, constitutes the chief study of the mass of 

 farmers. Hence, to secure large farms and lay them under the severest 

 contribution, is the effort of most of them. And when their land is 

 exhausted they abandon it for virgin fields, apparently exulting in the 



