10 



AGRICULTURE. 



domain of the United States, is mapped into farms, 

 and remember that of this farm -area only one-fourth 

 is tilled or mowed ; and when we further reflect that 

 the average yield per acre could be doubled if the 

 many could be brought up to the plane of the few 

 in the practice of intensive culture, then we begin to 

 realize what numbers our country is capable of feed- 

 ing, and what waste of toil and effort comes from 

 neglect of the economic lessons taught by the statis- 

 tics of scientific agriculture. 



We now know that our wheat occupies an area less 

 than the surface of South Carolina; and, if the 

 yield should equal that of England, half of _ that 

 acreage would suffice. "We know of our national 

 crop, maize, which grows from Oregon to Florida, 

 and yearly waves over a broader field than all the 

 cereals besides, that it covers a territory not larger 

 than the Old Dominion, and might produce its am- 

 plest stores within narrower limits than the present 

 boundaries of Virginia. The potato-crop could grow 

 in the area of Delaware, though yielding less than a 

 hundred bushels per acre ; the barley for our brew- 

 ing requires less than the area of a half-dozen coun- 

 ties ; and the weed of solace, sufficient to glut our 

 own and European markets, is grown on the area of 

 a county twenty miles square. 



The average farmer of the Eastern States disre- 

 gards the logic of facts which reveals success only in 

 high culture. His brother of the West has cheap 

 lands, very fertile, easily worked, without obstruc- 

 tions interfering with the most varied employment 

 of agricultural machinery. His own lands may be 

 low m price, because poor in plant-food ; his sons 

 have gone into trade and manufactures, and to virgin 

 soils toward the sunset ; his surplus earnings have 

 gone to the savings-bank, or to Illinois or Kansas, as 

 a loan at ten per cent., until, rheumatic, and declin- 

 ing with age, he finds production also declining, his 

 herds and nocks decreasing, and the conclusion in- 

 evitable that " farming does not pay." Labor is 

 scarce and high because in demand by other indus- 

 tries, which in turn offer high prices for farm-prod- 

 ucts ; fertilization is needed everywhere, draining in 

 many situations, and irrigation in some others. But 

 these things cost money, and he has neither the 

 ambition nor the confidence for its expenditure, and, 

 worse still, in many instances the money is lacking. 

 These may be potent reasons for discouragement, 

 but they do not prove that farming there, with 

 money, youth, enterprise, and skill, may not be high- 

 ly profitable. And the teaching of statistics, in exam- 

 ples of high success with high culture, disproves the 

 current assumption of unprofitableness. There are 

 numerous cases in which the gross return per acre 

 lias been hundreds of dollars instead of tens. I 

 know an instance there in which a common vegeta- 

 ble, usually known in field-culture rather than in 

 gardening, returned in 1873 $12 for every day's labor 

 expended on it. The lesson of statistics of Great 

 Britain, of Holland, of all countries of dense popu- 

 lation, proves success to be only possible by enrich- 

 ing the soil and increasing the yield. Though Mas- 

 sachusetts farmers constitute but one-eighth of the 

 aggregate of all occupations, there is no reason why 

 they should not be able to feed all, if Great Britain, 

 with one-sixteenth of her population, can furnish 

 more than half her required food-supplies. And if, 

 in the present state of Massachusetts agriculture, the 

 value of her annual product be $442 to each farmer, 

 while the cultivator of the rich prairie State, Illinois, 

 earns But $560 (and in point of fact it is probable 

 that unenumerated products of the former State 

 would swell the total to the latter figures), then the 

 results of intensive culture throughout the Com- 

 monwealth would be comparatively munificent. This 

 is a valuable lesson which New England will ulti- 

 mately learn from statistics^ far more thoroughly 

 than is now known and practised by a few of her oest 

 cultivators. 



The West has also much to gain from the teach- 



ings of statistics. Iowa, vigorous and ambitious, 

 too young for despondency, is in a spasm of indig- 

 nation against monopoly and an excess of middle- 

 men, and yet in trade arid transportation she has but 

 eight per cent., or little more than half the propor- 

 tion of the Middle States. She may have too many 

 and too greedy go-betweens, and she needs justice 

 in the transportation of her products ; but these evils 

 remedied, the burden of her trouble would still re- 

 main. The great difficulty is, her corps of industry 

 has sixty-one per cent, of farmers instead of twenty- 

 five. Double-track railroads, canals vexed with 

 steam-propellers, grange-association, free trade, and 

 every other fancied boon obtained, she will still re- 

 main in comparative poverty and positive discontent 

 while she continues to have less than fourteen per 

 cent, of her people engaged in manufacturing and 

 mechanical industry. History does not point to a 

 permanently prosperous people having such pre- 

 ponderance of population in agricultural pursuits. 



Minnesota is only happy when the people of Great 

 Britain are supposed to be in danger of starvation. 

 That danger is greatly over-estimated. Statistics 

 will show that in some years but three per cent, of 

 our wheat-export, and but a trifling proportion in 

 any season, can be sold to any except subjects of 

 Great Britain. On one-sixteenth the area of that 

 island is grown in a good year 100,000,000 bushels of 

 wheat ; in an average season 90,000,000 ; and in fif- 

 teen years, from 1858 to 1872 inclusive, the de- 

 ficiency made good by importation was a fraction less 

 than 66,000, 000 -per annum. Could home-culture be. 

 extended to meet this demand, the total breadth re- 

 quired would be equal to one-ninth the surface of 

 Minnesota. An increase in the average yield of wheat 

 in France from fifteen bushels to eighteen-by a small 

 advance in culture, would fully equal the British de- 

 ficiency, as was recently stated by the well-known 

 statistician, Mr. James Caird. Kussia, with her broad 

 and cheap acres, also stands near to compete for this 

 deficiency. Minnesota, meanwhile, as her crop is 

 maturing, can never ascertain whether the want will 

 be 40,000^000 or 90,000,000, or whether the home price 

 will be fitty cents or $] , or the ultimate result debt 

 or competence. And yet seventy per cent, of the 

 cultivated area of Minnesota is put in wheat ; and 

 fifty-seven per cent, of her people are engaged in its 

 cultivation ; eig_ht per cent, in sending it to market ; 

 a large proportion of its fourteen per cent, of me- 

 chanics and manufacturers are building mills and 

 grinding wheat ; and its twenty-one per cent, of 

 professional men expect much of their income from 

 wheat. There are reasons why wheat should be 

 temporarily grown there, but dependence upon for- 

 eign markets, evidently felt by many, for a per- 

 manent and increasing demand, is shown by statis- 

 tics to be foolish and futile. The home-market is 

 the only reliable and permanently valuable one for 

 this cereal, and the nearer to the place of growth the 

 surer and larger the benefit derived. 



The cotton States have- been especially persistent 

 in disregarding the teachings of statistics and de- 

 fying the laws of political economy. Every intel- 

 ligent publicist knows that a certain amount of 

 money ; say a present average of $300,000,000, may 

 be derived from cotton. If the average quantity 

 is increased the price diminishes, and vice versa. 



If fluctuations are frequent the speculator or man- 

 ufacturer, and not the producer, derives an advan- 

 tage. If you choose to produce 5,000,000 bales ; you 

 obtain ten cents per pound and lose money ; it you 

 grow but three, you get twenty cents and obtain a 

 profit. Now it is better for the world, and in a series 

 of years better for the grower, to produce regularly 

 enough to supply the current wants of the trade at a 

 medium and remunerative price, or as near a regular 

 supply as possible, for the vicissitudes of the season 

 will inevitably cause injurious fluctuations despite 

 the highest effort of human wisdom and foresight. 

 As the uses of cotton increase, and markets are ex- 



