HOME PRODUCE COMPARED WITH FOREIGN. 41 



produce of our mines and manufactures. These 

 are advantageously interchanged for the corn 

 and other agricultural products of foreign lands. 

 This will go on while the commerce is found 

 mutually profitable. And it will be profitable 

 so long as, by superior skill and enterprise, 

 combined with exceptional mineral advantages, 

 we can undersell other countries in the produce 

 of our manufactories and mines, while they 

 can supply us with corn at a cheaper rate than 

 we can grow it at home. Our present relation 

 with foreign countries is becoming like that of 

 a crowded capital, which draws its fresh supplies 

 of vegetables, milk, and meat from the market- 

 gardens, meadows, and rich grazings in its 

 vicinity, but looks to more distant lands for the 

 corn and other commodities which bear long 

 transport from cheaper and more distant farms. 

 Nearly one-half of our corn is now of foreign 

 growth, and not quite one-third of our meat 

 and dairy produce ; whilst year by year our 

 corn-land is giving place to the more profitable 

 produce afforded by the milk and grazing and 

 market - garden farms, which are gradually 



