TEACH AS TO FARMING. 7 



I presume careful investigation would discover the existence of 

 a pretty general Law of Proportion between the market value of 

 a farm and the amount of labor that should be annually devoted 

 to its cultivation, apart from enduring improvements. Let us 

 suppose a farm of one hundred acres to be worth, this year, $10 

 per acre, or $1,000 in all ; then we will say one man's labor, or 

 three hundred days' work per year, worth $300 in all, might be as 

 much as could be profitably bestowed on its mere cultivation, 

 But roads and markets improve, until this land is worth $30 an 

 acre, or the farm $3,000 ; and now much more of it may li- taken 

 out of forest or pasture, and devoted to grain and vegetables, 

 involving an increase of the labor expended on it to three men's 

 steady work, or $900 per year. So, as the value increased to 

 $50, $75, and at length $100 per acre, the labor employed 

 thereon should be correspondingly increased, whether by a divi- 

 sion of the farm or otherwise. I do not profess to indicate the 

 precise proportion of present labor to Valuation of fixed Capital, 

 but only that there is such a proportion, and that Economic 

 Science will yet ascertain and declare it. 



It is not necessary that land should be cultivated in order to be 

 productive. The young, growing wood is earning money for its 

 owner, as well as the corn-field. He who has land that he does 

 not need, yet wishes to keep for his children, can hardly serve 

 them better than by inclosing it effectually, planting it with locust, 

 hickory, and other choice timber, ami leaving it undisturbed till 

 his sons may require it. But, even left in open, naked common, 

 land generally tends to improve from the renovating influences' 

 of the atmosphere alone, as the reclaimed "old- fields" of the 

 South bear witness. It is only poorly farmed land that is a blight 

 to its possessor, and a discredit to the country. If all the labor 

 now devoted to farming, throughout the Union, were wisely con- 

 centrated on one-half the land, our annual product would be much 

 larger, our lands would appear far more productive and valuable, 

 while the timber that we are now wasting and destroying, as 

 though Prophet Miller's speedy conflagration of the world were a 

 demonstrated verity, would be gradually re-investing the earth 

 with a beauty and graceful majesty which Cabot or John Smith 



