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JEFFERSON TO PRESIDENT WASHINGTON, FROM PHILADELPHIA, 

 JUNE 28, 1793 



The following letter provides a survey of agriculture in 

 Virginia at the end of the eighteenth century. 



Dear Sir, — I should have taken time ere this to have considered 

 the observations of Mr. Young, could I at this place have done it in 

 such a way as would satisfy either him or myself. When I wrote the 

 notes of the last year, I had never before thought of calculating 

 what were the profits of a capital invested in Virginia agriculture. . . . 

 Mr. Young must not pronounce too hastily on the impossibility of an 

 annual production of £750 worth of wheat coupled with a cattle product 

 of £125. My object was to state the produce of a good farm, under 

 good husbandry as practised in my part of the country. Manure does 

 not enter into this, because we can buy an acre of new land cheaper 

 than we can manure an old acre. Good husbandry with us consists in 

 abandoning Indian corn and tobacco, tending small grain, some red 

 clover, following, and endeavoring to have, while the lands are at 

 rest, a spontaneous cover of white clover. I do not present this as 

 a culture judicious in itself, but as good in comparison with what 

 most people there pursue. Mr. Young has never had an opportunity of 

 seeing how slowly the fertility of the original soil is exhausted. 

 With moderate management of it, I can affirm that the James river 

 lowgrounds with the cultivation of small grain, will never be ex- 

 hausted; because we know that under that cultivation we must now and 

 then take them down with Indian corn, or they become, as they were 

 originally, too rich to bring wheat. The highlands, where I live, 

 have been cultivated about sixty years. The culture was tobacco and 

 Indian corn as long as they would bring enough to pay the labor. 

 Then they were turned out. After four or five years rest they would 

 bring good corn again, and in double that time perhaps good tobacco. 

 Then they would be exhausted by a second series of tobacco and corn. 

 Latterly we have begun to cultivate small grain; and excluding Indian 

 corn, and following, such of them as were originally good, soon rise 

 up to fifteen or twenty bushels the acre. We allow that every laborer 

 will manage ten acres of wheat, except at harvest. I have no doubt 

 but the coupling cattle and sheep with this would prodigiously improve 

 the produce. This improvement Mr. Young will be better able to cal- 

 culate than anybody else. I am so well satisfied of it myself, that 

 having engaged a good farmer from the head of Elk, (the style of farm- 

 ing there you know well,) I mean in a farm of about 500 acres of clear- 

 ed land and with a dozen laborers to try the plan of wheat, rye, po- 

 tatoes, clover, with a mixture of some Indian corn with the potatoes, 

 and to push the number of sheep. This last hint I have taken from 



