421 



This is indeed a country of surprises and anomalies to the emigrant. With no wood- 

 man's tedious labor, no mingling and manipulation of incongruous strata of intract- 

 able soils, no amelioration with fertilizers, a fair, fertile area, a farm ready made, lies 

 invitingly before liim. He has only to break the soil, deposit the seed of maize in the 

 congenial earth, which forthwith prepares to laugh with a generous harvest, without 

 even the premonitory tickling with the hoe ; and, strange enough, as culture advances, 

 and crops and herds increase, in this inverted order of things, little belts of forest 

 spring up, groves dot the varied landscape, the monotony of which is broken by 

 a display of the lovely lines of forest scenery. 



The evideuc so jirofusely presented all around in every section of this exhibition, 

 in the m.agniticeut array of farm stock, the wouderful abundance and variety of the 

 fruits of the soil, and the marvelous ingenuity and skill iu the farm implements 

 adapted to almost every want of agriculture, attest the energy and zeal with which 

 you press forward iu the race of agricultural improvement, and constitute an earnest 

 for, and a guarantee of, greater triumphs in the future. 



In a region less favored by nature, or one in which the soil is exhausted by constant 

 cropping iu some special and exhaustive culture, it is a labor most herculean to attain 

 the highest fertility and the greatest productiveness aud proht of farming. Here you 

 have a virgin soil, or if deteriorated in places by unskilled husbandry, still not beyond 

 the reach of speedy recuperation at small expense of money and effort. This is an ad- 

 vantage of priceless value; improve it; arrest the first steps of deterioration. In this 

 connection you will pardon a few suggestions which have long borne with the weight 

 of conviction upon my mind. 



THE WHEAT SPECIALTY. 



In the central portion of the West, I have no hesitation in declaring that wheat- 

 growing as a specialty should cease. It maybe tolerated by the pioneer farmer, with- 

 out capital, who adopts it as an inevitable necessity of his poverty, and as an expedient 

 for exchanging a part of the intrinsic value of his farm for houses aud implements, 

 for horses and cattle, for feuces and for other improvements. The danger is, that 

 haAdng converted half his fixed investment into working capital, he may by force of 

 habit continue to reduce its productive value, until his improvements are worn out, 

 his surplus wasted, his fields barren, and tiie strength of his manhood gone, leaving 

 him only the infirmities of age with which to renew the battle of life upou other and 

 untried fields ; or if he enriches himself while desjioiling the land of its fatness, he en- 

 tails hard labor aud comparative poveity upon his successor. It is a practice unworthy 

 of this age of progress, aud of the wouderful capabilities of the soil which it impover- 

 ishes; it is one that engenders weeds, deteriorates seed, discourages system, and repu- 

 diates science. The vandals of cultivation should be kept on the outskirts of the 

 domain of agriculture. 



Exporters of breadstufi:s aud political enthusiasts, who neither know nor care for the 

 interests of the farmers, sometimes prate of the great value of cereal exportations. It 

 is, and ever must be, if persisted in as a settled policy, and relied upon as a permanent 

 source of prosperity, an unmitigated curse rather than a blessing. It disturbs the 

 equilibrium of production, despoils the soil of its fertility, fattens a horde of go-betweens, 

 and often gives the larger i^ortiou of the crop for the transportation of the remnant. 

 No man in his senses, or unblinded by the glare of gold, can fail to see the wastefulness 

 of the exportation to another continent of so bulky a product as wheat or flour. If, as 

 is asserted, the price of the quantity consumed at home is fixed by the price of that 

 which is sold abroad, the comparatively large exportation of last year might as well 

 have been burned with the straw, so far as the grower was concerned, for the reduction 

 iu the home consumption far exceeded the value of the exports at the seaboard. 



Very few, indeed, realize the comparative paucity of our exports of wheat and flour. 

 In forty-three years, up to the close of the fiscal year 1868, the wheat exported was less 

 than the quantity produced in the United States in 1869, and the wheat aud flour 

 together would aggregate little more than the crops of the past two years, namely, 

 236,942,887 bushels of wheat, or with flour included as wheat, 670,900,182 bushels. 



Another consideration is found in this fact — but one nationality. Great Britain and 

 its dependencies, requires it ; the purchases of all other nations are us'ually a mere 

 bagatelle — not worth consideration. Thus we depend practically upon supplying the 

 necessities of but one single people, aud have iu competition with us all the wheat- 

 exporting nations of the earth; aud the extent of those necessities varies with every 

 change of season, aud our share in the supply fluctuates with every caprice of trade. 



A nation that lives by exporting wheat live thousand miles by land and sea must 

 haA^e a short existence. It is a folly which the practical sense of our farmers will 

 never practice extensively, the vestiges of which will vanish gradually as population 

 increases and advances westward. Let our agricultural exports increase in meat and 

 cheese and wool, and in a hundred extended and valuable products of agriculture, not 

 not in wheat. 



