CULTIVATORS— THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL CLASS OF AMERICA 539 



of western New- York will supph- the Bos- 

 ton market with apples ; and thus, wherever 

 the finest transportable products of the soil 

 are in demand, there they will find their 

 way. 



There are, however, many of the finer 

 and more perishable products of the garden 

 and orchard which will not bear a long 

 journey. These, it should be the peculiar 

 business of the cultivator of the older and 

 less fertile soil in the sea-board states to 

 grow. He may not, as an agriculturist, be 

 able to compete with the fertile soils of the 

 west ; but he may still do so as a horticul- 

 turist, by devoting his attention and his 

 land to orchards and gardens. If it is too 

 difficult and expensive to renovate an old 

 soil that is worn out, or bring up a new one 

 naturally poor, for farm crops, in the teeth 

 of western grain prices, he may well afford 

 to do so for the larger profit derived from 

 orchard and garden culture, where those 

 products are raised for which a market 

 must be found without long transportation. 

 He who will do this most successfully must 

 not waste his time, labor and capital, by 

 working in the dark. He must learn gar- 

 dening and orcharding as a practical art, 

 and a science. He must collect the lost 

 elements of the soil from the animal and 

 mineral kingdoms, and bring them back 

 again to their starting point. He must 

 seek out the food of plants in towns and 

 villages, where it is wasted and thrown 

 away. He must plant and prune so as to 

 aid and direct nature, that neither time nor 

 space are idly squandered. 



Certainly, we have just pride and plea- 

 sure in looking upon the great agricultural 

 class of America. Landholders and pro- 

 prietors of the soil, as they are, governing 

 themselves, and developing the resources 

 of a great nation — how different is their 

 position from that of the farmers of Eng- 



land, — hundreds of thousands of men, 

 working, generation after generation, upon 

 lands leased by a small privileged body, which 

 alone owns and entails the soil ; or even from 

 that of France, where there are millions of 

 proprietors, but proprietors of a soil so sub- 

 divided that the majority have half a dozen 

 acres, or perhaps, even a half or fourth of 

 an acre in extent, — often scarcely sufficient 

 to raise a supply of a single crop for a small 

 family. 



If we have said anything calculated to 

 inspire self-respect in the agricultural class 

 of this country, it is not wiih a view to les- 

 sen that for any other of its industrial 

 classes. Far from it. Indeed, with the 

 versatility of power and pursuits \.-hich 

 characterise our people, no class can be 

 said to be fixed. The farming class is the 

 great nursery of all the professions, and the 

 industrial arts of the country. From its 

 bosom go out the shrewdest lawj'ers and 

 the most successful merchants of the towns; 

 and back to the country return these classes 

 again, however successful, to be regene- 

 rated in the primitive life and occupation of 

 the race. 



But the agricultural class perhaps is still 

 wanting in a just appreciation of its im- 

 portance, its rights and its duties. It has 

 so long listened to sermons, lectures and 

 orations, from those who live in cities and 

 look upon country life as " something for 

 dull wits,'^ that it still needs apostles who 

 draw their daily breath in green fields, and 

 are untrammelled by the schools of politics 

 and trade. 



The agricultural journals, over the whole 

 country, have done much to raise the dig- 

 nity of the calling. They have much still 

 to do. The importance of agricultural 

 schools, of a high grade, should be continu- 

 ally insisted upon, until every state legis- 

 lature in the Union comes forward with libe- 



