FARMING CAPITAL TOO SMALL. 207 



These tillage farms are cultivated by persons who do 

 not usually possess more than £1 an acre of capital ; they 

 afford, in fact, an opportunity for persons to begin life who 

 do not possess money enough of their own to buy farms, 

 at least in that neighbourhood. What kind or quality of 

 farming would be looked for, in any of our best districts, 

 from men with such a capital as this ? 



I may here remark, indeed, as my general impression 

 in regard to the^ farming of the whole of north-eastern 

 America it was my fortune to visit — that too little capital 

 is employed in cultivating the land. The land itself, and 

 the labour of their families, is nearly all, the capital which 

 most of the farmers possess. And if any of them save a 

 hundred dollars, they generally prefer to lend it on mort- 

 gage at high interest, or to embark it in some other 

 pursuit which they think will pay better than farming, 

 than to lay it out in bettering their farms, or in establish- 

 ing a more generous husbandry. 



Of the rich grazing land, an acre and a half fattens off 

 a beast which in the lean state will cost £5. Those who 

 hold this land, therefore, require a capital of £3 or £4 an 

 acre to stock it. 



With a capital of £1 an acre only, an exhausting 

 system of culture can scarcely fail to be followed — espe- 

 cially as the custom is to remain only from four to eight 

 years, and during this time to save as much as enables 

 the tenant to buy a farm somewhere for himself. Hence 

 the necessity for the strictest adherence to a rotation 

 such as that I have mentioned. 



On the whole, under this system of management, Mr 

 Wadsworth calculates that his land yields him five per 



expiring, pays a I'ent of 62 quarters each of wheat, barley, and oats, or 

 3 bushels of wheat, 3 of barley, and 3 of oats per imperial acre, reckoned 

 at the average prices for the same year between November and February. 

 Eight bushels of wheat per acre is a higher rent than the above nine of 

 mixed crops ; but the land of the farm I allude to is not naturally so 

 good as that upon the Genesee. 



