1856.] Prices and Profits of Agricultural Products. 115 



tlie averment, that not a single intelligent merchant nor manufacturer 

 can be found, but will conscientiously declare that his department of 

 business is so crowded with numbers as to prevent a healthy competition 

 in legitimate trade. 



And that this depletion of the country, by withdrawing our young 

 men from agricultural pursuits, has become so excessive as to have pro- 

 duced an unpleasant degree of social atrophy, is, moreover, apparent 

 from stubborn facts, and startling figures, developed in our official tables. 

 Tor, as the general aggregate of our population is so rapidly increasing, 

 our villages growing from hundreds into thousands, and the population 

 of our cities swelling from tens to hundreds of thousands, •■•^ where every 

 avenue of business is throngod with jostling numbers, and every dep:!rt- 

 ment of industry is burning and throbbing with a feverish energy of 

 competition, it would be most naturally presumed that the " rural dis- 

 tricts " are also receiving their crowding accessories of sturdy farmers to 

 cultivate and fructify the fat fields and fertile plains of the country. 

 But, is this presumption sustained by facts ? From the census tables 

 of the government it appears that in 1840 there were in the United 

 States 3,717,756 persons employed in agriculture ; while in 1850 there 

 were but 2,400,583 persons thus employed; which, so far from showing 

 a ratio of increase in proportion to the ratio of increase in the population, 

 exhibits a positive diminution in the number of persons employed in 

 the agriculture of the United States in these ten years, from 1840 to 

 1850, of 1,317,173 persons ! But, certainly it would seem safe to pre- 

 sume that our own State of Ohio, productive, as it is, to the measure of 

 a proverb, and all the markets of the continent within ready reach, 

 would be filling her fertile farming-lands with thronging thousands of 

 intelligent husbandmen. But it is not so ! In 1840, Ohio had 272,579 

 persons employed in agriculture; in 1850, she had but 270,362 persons 

 thus employed: instead of a gain, we actually lost, 2,217 persons from 

 such employment, in the lapse of that single decade. 



And now, what of the other departments of industry, in this particu- 

 lar ? In 1840, the number of persons in the United States, engaged in 

 commerce, manufactures, and mining, amounted (in round numbers), to 

 925,000; in 1850, the number thus employed amounted to 1,600,000: 



**Note the growth of our cities and more important towns in ten years : 

 New York, population in 1840, 371,000, in 1850, 516,000. 

 Philadelphia, " » 220,000, «' 340,000. 



Cincinnati, « «« 46,000, " 116,000. 



Cleveland, " « 6,000, '« 17,000. 



