SOLON ROBINSON, 1843 377 



use it, we ought to raise it. I do not intend to argue the 

 point whether it is right or wrong to raise an article from 

 which mankind derive no benefit. For more than twenty 

 years, I have occasionally indulged in the luxury of the 

 pipe, and sometimes I think it is medicinally beneficial to 

 me. So I used to think of tea and coffee — that I could 

 not do without. But I have proved myself wrong there. 

 I now am convinced I am better in health, while making 

 use of cold water as my only drink. Long habit has made 

 many unable or unwilling to do without those articles of 

 luxury, and so it has of tobacco. Now tea and coffee we 

 cannot raise here in the West, (though we might use sub- 

 stitutes equally good,) but we can and ought to raise all 

 the tobacco that is used here: our soil and climate will 

 produce it just as certain as it will produce a crop of 

 corn. 



What a smoke it would raise, if it were only known 

 what a vast number of bushels of wheat which we ship 

 from Chicago alone, or products thereof, are returned to 

 us in this one article. Put that into your pipe, Messrs. 

 Editors, and smoke it. 



And so of hemp. Why, a man hereabouts, though liv- 

 ing upon a rich hemp soil, if he took it into his head to 

 indulge himself in the luxury of hanging himself, would 

 fain have to do it with an imported rope. 



Do we not all deserve a touch of the "rope's end" for 

 our neglect of this one branch of profitable industry? 



"Why, will hemp grow here in the North!" exclaims 

 some open-mouthed wonder-hunter. 



I don't know whether it will or not, but I have heard 

 that the article is grown "just across the ferry," in a lit- 

 tle place called Russia — that is not quite a tropical coun- 

 try I believe. 



And further, it is but a few weeks since I saw where 

 an excellent crop had been taken from the ground in 

 Jasper county, Indiana, about 50 miles South of the head 

 of Lake Michigan. The soil was just such as abounds 

 in all our prairie lands. The owner told me that owing 



