26 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



give up in despair. There are men who can sur- 

 mount every obstacle and defy discouragement 

 these need no advice ; but there are thousands who, 

 having little means and large families, can grow into 

 a good farm more easily and far more surely than 

 they can pay for it ; and these may wisely seek homes 

 where population is yet sparse and land is consequent- 

 ly cheap. Doubtless, some migrate who might bet- 

 tor have forborne ; yet the instinct which draws our 

 race toward sunset is nevertheless a true one. The 

 East will not be depopulated ; but the West will grow 

 more rapidly in the course of the next twenty years 

 than ever in the past. The Railroads which have 

 brought Kansas and Minnesota within three days, 

 and California within a week of us, have rendered 

 this inevitable. 



But the South also invites immigration as she never 

 did till now. Her lands are still very cheap ; she is 

 better timbered, in the average, than the West ; her 

 climate attracts; her unopened mines and unused 

 water-power call loudly for enterprise, labor and 

 skill. It is absurd to insist that her soil is exhausted 

 when not one-third of it has ever yet been plowed. 

 I do not advise solitary migration to the South, be- 

 cause she needs schools, mills, roads, bridges, 

 churches, &c., &c., which the solitary immigrant can 

 neither provide nor well do without : an<PI have no 

 assurance that he, if obliged to work out for present 

 bread, would find those ready to employ and willing 

 to pay him ; but let a hundred Northern farmers and 



