AGRICULTURE. 



9 



sey, where some of the light and sandy loams 

 have proved well adapted to the production of 

 a superior quality of the white sugar-beet. It 

 will doubtless become in a few years one of 

 our most valuable articles of produce. The 

 methods of extracting, reducing, and clarifying 

 the syrup, have been much cheapened and sim- 

 plified within a year or two past, and there 

 seems to be no good reason why beet-sugar 

 should not be produced as cheaply as that from 

 the cane. The rearing and feeding of silk- 

 worms, and the sale of their eggs and cocoons, 

 are becoming a very considerable business, and 

 will hasten the period now fast approaching 

 when the silk consumed in this country shall 

 be wholly manufactured here. California is 

 admirably adapted for silk culture, and is em- 

 barking in it extensively. She is already ex- 

 porting very largely both of silk-worms' eggs 

 and cocoons, and her cocoons command the 

 highest prices of any in the world. The silk- 

 worm is not affected with disease there, nor is 

 it killed by the thunder-storms which prove so 

 fatal in Europe. 



The Agricultural Colleges and agricultural 

 departments of previously-existing colleges, es- 

 tablished under the agricultural land-grants of 

 Congress, have not as yet achieved the suc- 

 cess which was expected of them. This has 

 resulted from several causes : there were, previ- 

 ously to the establishment of these institutions, 

 no schools in this country in which a thorough 

 training in many branches of agricultural sci- 

 ence could be acquired, and the European ag- 

 ricultural schools and colleges were intended 

 to supply intelligent agriculturists for a dif- 

 ferent climate, soil, and circumstances, and 

 the sudden demand for so many agricultural 

 professors could not readily be met by men 

 competent for the work which they under- 

 took. There has been also a great degree of 

 ignorance on the part of many of the trustees 

 of these institutions of what was required for 

 an agricultural college. The model farms have 

 been very far from what ordinary farms could 

 or should be made ; and the whole course of 

 instruction lacked clearness and definiteness 

 of purpose. There are, in all, twenty-one 

 of these colleges or collegiate departments or- 

 ganized, and in a few of them there is the 

 prospect of a better state of things ; but, as 

 most of them are at present constituted, we 

 believe the young man who aspires to become 

 a skilful and successful farmer would do better 

 to hire himself out, at no matter what wages, 

 for three years, to some clear-headed, intelli- 

 gent farmer, and learn by actual experience 

 the practical value of his plans of farming, 

 studying meanwhile at all intervals of leisure 

 those sciences which have a direct bearing up- 

 on agriculture. He would in this way acquire 

 fewer theories, but more and better practical 

 knowledge. A very important question to 

 agriculturists and those intending to become 

 farmers is, how long it will be possible to ob- 

 tain land at any reasonable price. Already in 



most, even of the newer States, the Government 

 lands, except the most sterile and worthless, 

 are already taken up, and farming lands ad- 

 vantageously situated are not to be obtained 

 below ten, fifteen, or twenty dollars the acre. 

 The tendency to accumulate large landed es- 

 tates is greatly on the increase; and farms, 

 ranches, or estates, of from 50,000 to 300,000 

 acres are by no means uncommon in the re- 

 gions west of the Mississippi River and on the 

 Pacific slope. It is not too much to believe, 

 what is roundly asserted by many of the most 

 intelligent land-owners at the West, that by the 

 year 1900 there will be no Government lands 

 worth having (except perhaps in Alaska) to be 

 purchased, and that no good farming-lands will 

 be purchasable under a hundred dollars per acre 

 in our vast domain. There is, indeed, a large 

 amount as yet professedly unsold ; but of this 

 the greater part is as yet unsurveyed, though 

 its available tracts are staked for preemption, 

 location with land- warrants, or under the 

 homestead act, or destined to be secured by 

 some of the land-grant railroad companies, or 

 set apart for educational or charitable pur- 

 poses. Vast tracts, too, especially in the Rocky 

 Mountain and Pacific regions consist of moun- 

 tain-summits, or desert and uninhabitable lands, 

 like the bad lands (mauvaises terres} of Ne- 

 braska and Dakota, or covered with extensive 

 lakes like much of Minnesota and Wisconsin, or 

 great masses of primitive rock. Mr. Ezra Cor- 

 nell, the wealthy and shrewd founder of Cor- 

 nell University, though employing for three 

 years past one of the best land-buyers in the 

 West, and expending money very freely to 

 secure good opportunities for locating land- 

 warrants, has found it impossible to locate the 

 whole amount of the agricultural land-grant 

 of New York (990,000 acres) advantageously, 

 and is still securing lands wherever he can 

 find those which are available for his pur- 

 pose. The farmer who has ample capital, and 

 farms on a large scale, with the improved 

 methods of ploughing, cultivating, sowing, reap- 

 ing, mowing, thrashing, and packing his prod- 

 ucts by machinery, driven by steam or other 

 motive power, has greatly the advantage of 

 the small farmer, and can reckon up his profits 

 each year by scores of thousands of dollars ; 

 this style of farming may be expected there- 

 fore almost wholly to monopolize agriculture 

 as it is already doing manufacturing, commerce, 

 mining, and trade. This tendency to land mo- 

 nopoly is a great evil ; for land differs from 

 other descriptions of property in giving to its 

 owner a greater measure of independence, as 

 well as a more permanent interest in the na- 

 tional welfare. Especially is this the case in 

 a country where suffrage is free. Were every 

 voter a landholder, our legislation would be far 

 more thoughtful and judicious than it now is. 

 A nation, the large overwhelming majority of 

 whose voters are dependent upon others, and 

 have no tie binding them to the soil, is on the 

 high-road to ruin. 



