352 Percy Wells Bidwell 



results as follows: "The spirit of emigration, acting with full force 

 on an enterprising people, easily induced them to go to new states 

 in pursuit of the real or delusive advantages that were held out to 

 them. This constant draining from our population, while it afforded 

 a hardy, vigorous race for the cultivation of new territories; may 

 have produced a greater increase to the ultimate good and power 

 of the nation, than would have happened if these emigrants had 

 remained stationary; still it occasioned some local disadvantages. 

 In the first place it prevented the inhabitants from thinking of any 

 improvement; if their farm was not sufl5ciently productive, the easy 

 remedy to a restless people was to sell it, collect their effects and go 

 five or fifteen hundred miles (the distance, greater or less, was not 

 thought of) in pursuit of a richer soil. It was not by the employ- 

 ment of greater skill, but by a change in location, that they sought 

 to improve their condition."^ 



The Real Cause of Inefficient Agriculture was the Lack of a Market 



for Farm Products. 



The ignorance and the conservatism of the farmers were undoubt- 

 edly to some extent hindrances to agricultural progress; cheap land 

 on the frontier discouraged intensive cultivation at home; but these 

 circumstances do not, either alone or in combination, furnish a suf- 

 ficient explanation for the state of the industry which prevailed. 

 In the background lay a condition of much more significance, because 

 of its determining force upon all the others. I refer to the lack of a 

 market for agricultural products. Once given a market, neither 

 ignorance of the improved methods of agriculture nor the reluctance 

 to experiment along new lines, proceeding from a conservative dis- 

 position, nor the cheapness of land, inviting extensive cultivation, 

 could long have stood in the way of progress. If the farmers of 

 the inland towns had had an opportunity to exchange for the products 

 of the outside world their grain, meat and dairy products, they would 

 have seized upon every scrap of information regarding the means 

 by which their fields and live stock could be made more productive; 

 their adherence to traditional methods would have been weakened, 

 and they would have applied to the conduct of agriculture the same 

 adventurous and ingenious spirit which they displayed in the field 

 of mechanical invention and in that of commercial enterprise. Labor 

 might still have been expensive, yet they would have employed others 

 to work for them. The expense of labor was at this time a hin- 



1 Letters on the Eastern States, pp. 234-235. 



