192 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



tion of the world finds itself everywhere in distress. Even 

 its capital is declining in value, and the farmer has for the 

 past years been doing business on a falling market. There 

 is agricultural depression all over Christendom, not merely 

 in New England, but everywhere ; and the real explanation 

 I believe to* be in the great economic law affecting agricult- 

 ure, which I have mentioned ; that, while it cannot be 

 killed, and while it can and will change to suit new condi- 

 tions and is now changing to suit them, simply because of 

 the nature of the vocation, it could not change fast enough 

 to prevent suflfering. 



As a matter of fact, it changes faster here in New England 

 than in Old England, and there is actually much less agricult- 

 ural distress. The English farmer is so tied l)y the renting 

 system that he is not free to turn himself under these new 

 burdens. The abandonment of tilled land, so called, which 

 means the change from tilled crops to pasture or woodland, 

 has been much more extensive in Great Britain than here, 

 and land incomes have decreased more rapidly ; but they, 

 too, are adjusting themselves to the new conditions as fast 

 as the nature of the case allows. 



For nearly twenty years there has been a great and rapid 

 decline in the renting and sale value of English agricultural 

 land. A statement in a prominent and reliable English 

 journal, scarcely a month ago, says that the loss to landlords 

 has amounted to nine hundred millions sterling, and to ten- 

 ants one hundred millions more ; in the language of the 

 paper, " the total loss, adding the two together, being about 

 one billion pounds incurred in the last twenty years." That 

 makes the enormous sum of five billions of dollars ; and that 

 loss has taken place while other business interests have been 

 prosperous, and the population and total capital of the 

 country steadily increasing. 



The American farmer, who owns the land he tills and is 

 free to change his methods and his crops, easier adjusts him- 

 self to the new condition of things ; and yet the decline in 

 agricultural land has gone on in all the older States. One 

 writer says that it amounts to a hundred million of dollars 

 in Michigan ; another, twice that in New York ; another 

 states high figures as to the decline in Illinois : and so the 



