PROFITS OF FARMING. 173 



the pride of the State of New York, the happy home to 

 which the longing eyes of British and Irish agri- 

 culturists ha^^e long been directed, these are but low 

 averages. Either the land is not so good as it has been 

 called, or it is and has been badly treated. The 

 treatment has certainly been bad ; but, as surely, large 

 portions of the land are naturally very good, and may 

 still be made very productive. But these farmers of 

 western New York are exposed to the competition of 

 their more western brethren — a still nearer competition 

 than that under which our British farmers are suffering ; 

 and it is doubtful whether, with all their naturally rich 

 soils and low-priced lands, they can, on the longer 

 cultivated and more exhausted tracts, successfully 

 struggle with them in the raising of wheat. If they 

 can, it must be as with us at home, by the application of 

 more skill and prudence than has hitherto been applied 

 to rural affiiirs.* 



According to Mr Geddes, farming is so profitable in 

 this part of the State, that a person can buy 100 or 150 

 acres of land, can pay a part of the price in ready money, 

 give a mortgage for the remainder at 7 per cent, can 

 pay this interest, and gradually clear off the debt. 

 This, he said, was a very common practice ; and that 

 hence many of the farmers had mortgages on their land. 

 This may be true of Mr Geddes's neighbourhood ; but 

 all I have heard from others of the general condition of 

 the existing rural population north and east of the 

 Delaware, and of Lake Erie, is in confirmation of the 

 opinion that money is not to be made by farming, at 

 least in these parts of the States. I do not speak at 



* " What, I ask, is to meet this competition of the west, but greater 

 skill and greater care in the mode of agriculture 1 " These words, 

 addressed at the close of 1850 to the Oswego Agricultural Society by 

 their president, are a re-echo of what has been so often said among us 

 at home. 



