732 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



amonnt to an abjuration of our country and form 

 of government ; if state, to a banishment I'roin 

 our native soil and relations. But this miserable 

 remedy itself will ere long be exhausted, and after 

 an internal struggle Ibr the best birth in a bed of 

 thorns, the discovery will be made, that an endea- 

 vor in each to feather his own nest, is the only 

 way to procure comlbrt (or all ; and that the pros- 

 perity of the nation and the happiness of indivi- 

 duals depend on the improvement of land by a 

 proper application of labor. 



But what shall we do with our surplus labor, is 

 repeated, if we cease to employ it in killing land 1 

 One would think that this doubt could never be 

 entertained, except by a fatalist, who believed that 

 euch was the end Ibr which labor was created. 

 The effects of labor are the same in agriculture as 

 in architecture ; far more is necessary lo build than 

 to destroy; shall we thence also infer, that labor 

 is destined to destroy houses'? Where is the dif- 

 ference between destroying houses and destroying 

 the means by which houses are rendered comfort- 

 able'? The early Kentucky settlers contended, 

 that unless the sugar makers killed the sugar trees, 

 it threw a portion of their labor out of employ- 

 ment, and therefore inferred, that it was one of na- 

 ture's wise laws, that labor should kill the sources 

 of sugar. Did they borrow this opinion from our 

 querist, who thinks it wise and natural to employ 

 it in killing the source of bread ? If an abundance 

 of labor caused a land killing agricultural system, 

 and its scarcity the reverse, Flanders should be a 

 wilderness and Virginia a garden. A great re- 

 commendation of the inclosing and four shift 

 system, is the saving of labor it creates in fenc- 

 ing, and in renouncing the culture of exhausted 

 lands, to be applied to improvement. When we 

 come to consider a project Ibr the management of 

 a bread stuff farm, we shall discover full employ- 

 ment Ibr this surplus labor, which the three shift 

 system fears would be idle, if not employed as a 

 land executioner. The raising of manure, cover- 

 ing with clover every spot of land which will bear 

 it, and converting all moist land into meadow 

 would alone be sponsors for the futility of the ap- 

 prehension. And yet many other objects of labor 

 must be combined with the ibur shift and inclosing 

 system, to accelerate and augment the rewards 

 it will bestow. Hay in abundance must be made, 

 crops will be augmented, modes of tillage must 

 be improved, transportation with litter, manure 

 and crops, and gypsum, if resorted to, is by no 

 means niggardly in providing employment for la- 

 bor. If these observations have not removed the 

 apprehension of ruin, seriously and generally enter- 

 tained by the disciples of the corn, wheat and pas- 

 ture rotation, should they change the application 

 of their labor from impoverishing to improving 

 their land, it will still be removed by their own 

 superior reflections, if they will be pleased to re- 

 flect. They will certainly discover that the dan- 

 ger of wanting employment for their labor, lurks, 

 not in improving but in impoverishing their lands, 

 and that whilst they shudder at an apparition, 

 they are embracing an assassin. 



INDIAN CORN. 



It was very improbable that one who has often 

 joined in the execration of Indian corn, should have 



been destined to write its eulogy. Had we de- 

 signed to transfer from ourselves to an innocent 

 plant the heavy charge of murdering our land, its 

 acquittal before a jury whose own condemnation 

 would be the consequence, could not be expected; 

 but as nothing is more certain than that the ex- 

 clamations against corn and tobacco (and fbr the 

 last thirty years wheat ought lo have been placed 

 at the head ol'the triumvirate) Ibr killing our lands, 

 have proceeded from conviction, without a suspi- 

 cion that we ourselves were the perpetrators of the 

 act ; I shall venture to bring Indian corn to trial 

 before the real criminals, and its mistaken accusers. 



Arthur Young, in his travels through France 

 and Spain, observes, that the regions of maize ex- 

 hibited plenty and affluence, compared with those 

 where other crops were cultivated. As a failhfiil 

 agricultural annalist, he records the fact ; being 

 but little acquainted with the plant, he could not 

 satisfactorily account for it. Even a nation which 

 has lived with it, and almost upon it for two hun- 

 dred years, so far from correctly estimating its 

 value, have only learned to eat it, but not to avail 

 themselves of half its properties. Those for killing 

 land, they have turned lo the utmost account; 

 those fbr improving it, they have wholly neglect- 

 ed. The first capacity is common to all crops ; 

 the last is possessed by i'ew. Indian corn pro- 

 duces more fbod for man, beast and the earth, than 

 any other farinaceous plant. If the food it pro- 

 duces for the two first was wasted, and men and 

 beasts should thence become poor and perish, 

 ought their poverty or death to be ascribed to the 

 plant which produced the fbod or to those who 

 wasted it? Is Indian corn justly chargeable with 

 the impoverishment of the earth, if the food it pro- 

 vides for that is not applied 7 



If the theory which supposes that plants extract 

 most or all of their matter from the atmosphere, 

 and that the whole of this matter is manure, be 

 true, then that plant which produces most vegeta- 

 ble offal must be the most improving crop, and it 

 will hardly be denied that Indian corn is entitled 

 to this pre-eminence. 



Let us compare it with wheat. Suppose that 

 the same land will produce as much grain of the 

 one as of the other which in iis use will make 

 equal returns to the earth. Here the equality 

 ends, if indeed it exists even in this point. The 

 corn stalks infinitely exceed the wheat straw in 

 bulk, weight, and a capacity for making food for 

 the earth. If any attentive man who converts 

 both his stalks and straw into manure, will compare 

 their product in April, when he may distinguish 

 one from the other, he will find of the former a 

 vast superiority in quantity. The English farmers 

 consider wheat straw as their most abundant re- 

 source for manure, and corii stalks are far more 

 abundant ; corn therefbre is a less impoverishing 

 because a more compensating crop to the earth, 

 credited only for its stalks, than any in England. 

 In comparing crops, to ascertain their relative 

 product, and operation on the earth, we must con- 

 trast farinaceous crops with each other; and con- 

 sider the litter or offal they produce, not as wasted 

 but as judiciously applied to the compensation of 

 the land. At the threshold of the comparison, 

 corn exhibits a return from the same land of more 

 offal or litter in its stalks alone, than wheat does 

 altogether. But to the stalks of corn, its blades, 

 lops, ehucksj and cobs remain to be added, each of 



