423 



appears mostly in connection witli feeding in large numbers with a single variety of 

 food. The hog is omniverous, and does not long continue to thrive on corn alone, or on 

 distillery slops, but requires variety and bulk as well as nutriment. While cure in hog 

 cholera is an almost hopeless task, prevention is easy. 



I am glad to see by evidence all around me that the horse, the noblest of all farm 

 animals, is not neglected in this State. The opportunity for the exercise of taste, skill, 

 and science, aiiorded in the breeding of horses, is worthy of high ambition, aud no 

 man is fit to train a horse who cannot control his own spirit, and exhibit the virtues 

 of patience, gentleness, aud firmness. 



NEW LNDUSTRIES. 



He is a benefactor who will introduce among you a new plant from which food may 

 be obtained, or discover a method of utilizing one already known, who will establish 

 a factory for using a waste product of agriculture, or simplify or economize a process 

 already employed. There are those in the Eastern States who prosper in the collection 

 of marine algae, the Chondrns crisjuis, or Irish moss, for edible and fining purposes, aud 

 various sea-weeds for fertilizers ; who pulverize the leaves and tender twigs of the 

 hardback of the pastures fur the tauuin they contain, and who amass fortunes by the 

 freezing of fat turkeys in winter to sell in a frozen state in summer, like congealed 

 blocks, from the recesses of an ice-house. The industrious poor of the South find a 

 jirofitable business in the collection of sumac ; the people of Southern Florida are coin- 

 ing thousands from garden patches in the culture of bananas aud x>ine apples ; and 

 other products, as oranges, lemons, limes, and figs, fiber from ramie, paper stuff ironi 

 cane, and oil from tlie IHcinns, are engaging special attention. 



It is often a minor industry which yields superior profits to those engaged in it. 

 There are sources of wealth iu the rich flora of the West which are now neglected or 

 spurned, and waste products which might be utilized to great advantage. The flax 

 fiber, which you formerly cast aside as worthless, is already used extensively in the 

 manufacture of tow bagging for enveloping cotton bales, and enough is probably 

 wasted to supply the southern market wirh this substitute for jute bagging. A grass 

 (the Spartina, or cord grass) grows in this State in the rankest luxuiiauce, on the 

 swampy bottoms on the Mississipjii, Avhich makes an excellent jiaper, and a profit is 

 already made in its mauulacture. 



Let the long list, of which these are but random samples, be extended, and new 

 rewards be offered to labor, new premiums for industry and ingenuity, by your societies, 

 leading to the development of uew industries, some of which may be small and others 

 amount to millions in their full development. There is work for all; and with this 

 wide variety will come new outgrowths and applications, involving more labor aud 

 new^ creations of wealth. 



I have aimed to make the Department of Agriculture a medium of these new devel- 

 opments, and have shown to Congress that we have been importing a hundred millions 

 annually which we have good reason to believe may be produced at home, with benefit' 

 to our monetary exchanges, aud with still greater advantage in diversifying produc- 

 tion, in furnishing profitable labor to the swarms of willing laborers yearly approach- 

 ing our shores, and iu adding to the personal comfort and prosperity of all laboring 

 classes. These products consist of fruits, grains, aud other edibles, textiles, gums, 

 sugars, dyes, and medicines. Of the latter, Cinchona, yielding the quinine of phar- 

 macy, has already been- propagated with success, in the expectation of being able to 

 establish a cinchona plantation among the mountains of the South or in Southern 

 California, in* imitation of the successful exiieriment of the British government in India. 



A few industries may be profitably extended, and the time noAv seems ripe for such 

 extension. Sugar is a product required in annually increasing quantity, for the i)ro- 

 duction of which favorable soils and circumstances combine; and American enterprise, 

 in the spirit of a true national economy, must eventually su])ply the demand from 

 native resources of soil and labor. More than a half million of tons, costing $70,000,000 

 in gold, is now required per annum ; and of this but one-tenth is produced upon our 

 soil. With sirups, $100,000,000 will scarcely pay the first cost of a year's consumption 

 of swet ts, aud, including transportation and dealers' profits, $125,000,000 will not 

 suffice o settle the bill. Europe, with no opportunity to produce sugar from cane, has 

 in the last half century supplied her teemiug millions from the juices of the beet, and 

 from this source alone has made a contribution of one-fourth to the total aggregate of 

 the sugar production of the world. We have the power, in the next quarter of a century, 

 of satisfying the home demand for saccharine products, either from the cane or the beet 

 alone, but with both we can scarcely fail of attaining a result so essential to the na- 

 tional weal. The experiment at Chatsworth, so unfortunate in many respects, will 

 assure the success of others through its own failiu-e, aud through a better adaptation 



