etLTtJRE OF HEMP, 8S 



Culture of Hemp. 



Some farmers, well informed in the business of practical ag- 

 riculture, arc of the opinion that hemp may ultimately become 

 one of the most important and valuable exports from the interi- 

 or of New-England, as well as the western and southern States; 

 and that it is as natural and valuable a staple, and every way 

 adapted to our climate and soil, as cotton is to the climate and 

 soil of the south. Some of them say that it will produce more 

 pounds to the acre than cotton, and with much less manual la- 

 bor ; and will command in market, if properly prepared and 

 handled, a price as great as the short stapled cottons, by the 

 pound. And to induce our northern farmers to engage in it, it 

 has been observed, that before the introduction of cotton into 

 the interior of the Carolinas and of Georgia, corn and provi- 

 sions were, as tliey now are among us, a mere drug, utterly un- 

 convertable into cash, even at a very low price : and that as 

 the introduction of cotton there raised the demand and the 

 price, and made a ready market for grain, so that of raising 

 hemp may in New-England and the western States. 



Could the introduction of hemp become the means of divert- 

 ing, in some measure, the market of rye and corn from the dis- 

 tilleries, those engines of corruption, disease and misery, it cer- 

 tainly would be a valuable improvement to the condition of our 

 country. 



We now purchase great quantities of Russian hemp at enor- 

 mous prices, for the calls of our commerce and naval establish- 

 ments, because we have not, it is said, sufficient that is fit for 

 use. 



Our surplus rye and corn now go to the retailing merchant, 

 a great proportion of it, and from the merchant to the distiller. 

 But if hemp were introduced as one of the staples of our agri- 

 cultural system, the growers of it would be in a condition to 

 purchase much of the grain ^vhich is now sold for foreign mer- 

 chandize, and to pay cash for it, which would better promote 

 the interest of those who cultivate it. 



As the culture of this plant has not been much attended to in 

 the northern States, the following remarks, by a writer who ap- 

 pears to have been a practical farmer, are worthy of consider- 

 ation : "This plant flourishes most in a mellow, dry soil,* and 

 the richer the better. It affords little or no profit on lands of 



* The editors of the Agfricultural Encyclopedia, howerer, say 

 that the soils most suited to the culture of this plant, are those of 

 the deep, black, putrid, rogetablo kind, that are low, and rather 



