6 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER. 
It is gratifying to Believe, from indubitable evidence, that the examples 
of rational and recuperative culture are relatively increasing, however 
slowly, and gradually making inroads upon the destructive, irrational 
modes so generally prevalent. These examples are most numerous in 
the Middle States, are seen with comparative frequency in the older see- 
tions of the West, are found occasionally in New England, and are begin- 
ning to be noted in the Southern States; but there is no State in which 
exhaustive and irrational culture is not predominant. While the cost 
of good land is less than the interest on its intrinsic value, and its yearly 
income may be enhanced at the expense of the permanent investment, 
there is little hope that present necessity or short-sighted greed will fail 
' to work its impoverishment; but with high prices, both of land and 
labor, it is more than folly to expect remunerative profits from unsys- 
tematic and unscientific culture. 
The grower of tobacco, turning out his old fields to sedge and “pov- 
erty grass,” with the full conviction that his crop is inevitably destrue- 
tive to fertility, has now an occasional opportunity to learn that heavy 
yields are not inconsistent with annual improvement. 
The wheat-grower of Genesee, despondent over the waning produc- 
tions of his fair fields, can turn to the example of a progressive neigh- 
bor and witness the old munificence returning through the avenue of 
_ systematic rotation. 
In Ulinois, the specialist in wheat, taught wisdom by many lessons of 
experience and observation, is rapidly learning that prairie soils may be 
enriched by alternations of grass and roots with corn and wheat, all 
except the wheat being converted into meat, milk, butter, cheese, &c., 
upon the farm. 
And cotton-growers are leariing that, with a monopoly of their staple, 
a climate unsurpassed for perfecting it, and some of the richest lands of 
the world for its cultivation, their section has grown poorer with its 
continued culture, and can nowhere show a valley so replete with all the 
elements of wealth as that of the Mohawk, so long carpeted with grass 
and flecked with cattle. Profitable as cotton may be, and rich as the 
best southern soils surely are, its culture, as a special crop, apart from 
suitable alternating growths, will ultimately result in poverty and bar- 
renuess. 
The enlightened ‘agricultural economist, in deprecating exclusive spe- 
cial culture, whether of cotton, wheat, or other crops, objects to the 
irrational mode of cultivation, and not to the amount of production— 
inveighs not against a surplus, foe opposes a practiée reprehensible and 
ruinous, which tends directly and speedily to defeat the object of cul- 
ture and to belittle the rewards of labor. 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 
The organize ition of industrial colleges, under the land grant of Con- 
gress of 1862, chronicled in recent annual reports of this Department, 
