50 AGRICULTURE IX THE UNITED STATES. 



templated as a principal object of attention. Lands were 

 granted on condition that one hundred mulberry trees should 

 be planted for every ten acres cleared. Had this industry been 

 persistently fostered, Georgia might have become to America 

 what Lyons is to France, for the quality of the product was un- 

 rivaled. A package of raw silk weighing two hundred pounds, 

 exported in 1790, brought the highest price in the foreign mar 

 ket. It is interesting to contrast the policy of the Old Domiu- 

 ion with that of the Old Commonwealth. Massachusetts, keep 

 ing the factory and the farm in close contact, though sorely 

 crippled at times by a policy thrust upon her by the South, has, 

 during all that period, &quot;against even the laws of nature,&quot; drawn 

 the cotton of other States to her looms, the iron of other States 

 to her anvils, the wool of other States to her factories, their 

 leather to her lapstones, until the value- of her soil, per foot, 

 has exceeded the value of the same per acre in States which 

 set out with her in the race. 



It was humiliating to the statesmen of Virginia, remembering 

 that she was among the first to call attention to agricultural 

 improvements in the structure of implements, in the qualities 

 of domestic animals, and to the importance of diffusing agri 

 cultural information, to feel herself thus distanced. Her east 

 ern shore seemed to invite a direct emigration from Europe, 

 and was cut with natural canals offering the cheapest trans 

 portation; yet, ten or twelve years before the civil war, her most 

 enlightened and patriotic citizens were endeavoring, through her 

 agricultural societies, to do something for the depressed and 

 wretched condition of the farming interests throughout the 

 State.&quot; In most of the counties of the tide-water region there 

 was a great extent of waste land, impoverished by the injudi 

 cious culture of corn and tobacco. In the year 1845, a hundred 

 and twenty families from the Northern States settled in Fairfax 

 county, and purchased 24,000 acres of land, at a cost of about 

 $180,000. These settlers, by their industry and skill, not only 

 fertilized and beautified their own estates, but imparted to their 

 neighbors a part of their own indomitable energy. In a very 

 few years the advance in the price of land averaged fifty per 

 cent. Col. John Taylor, of Caroline, said &quot;he was satisfied 

 that wheat would not pay (grown by slave labor), when the 

 product fell below ten bushels to the acre.&quot; The average pro 

 duct was then eight bushels ! It is seven at the present time ! 



