1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 311 



occupied the former's attention, and opened to him remote 

 and even foreign markets for his trade. This frontier farm- 

 ing, however, is but temporary, and must be followed by 

 that systematic husbandry which constitutes the legitimate 

 business of the American former, and carries him back to 

 those days when agriculture was almost the sole business of 

 the country, and when a prudent and industrious farming 

 community w^as uniformly prosperous. While our large 

 towns and our manufacturing States therefore provide mar- 

 kets for a large portion of the products of the West, they 

 also support that more profitable system, which consists 

 in a careful cultivation of the soil and in the economical 

 management of small farms. The trade of this country to 

 which I have alluded is immense, and the sources of supply 

 in all their variety form an interesting topic for considera- 

 tion. 



New England requires about twenty million bushels of 

 wheat, and produces only one and a quarter millions. New 

 York uses thirty millions, and grows about twelve millions. 

 The supply of this deficiency comes from the West, — from 

 the Ohio valley and the prairies west of the Mississippi and 

 the Missouri, — and costs from forty to fifty million dollars 

 in years of good production, but still more in this year of 

 comparative scarcity. 



To assume, however, from the fact that New York goes 

 West for six-tenths of her wheat supply, that wheat growing 

 is an unprofitable industry there, would be an unsafe and 

 unreliable conclusion. There are eight counties south of 

 Lake Ontario which yielded, in 1879, (5,086,876 bushels 

 on 377,269 acres; or eighteen and six-tenths bushels per 

 acre, — a rate more than fifty per cent above that of Min- 

 nesota or Dakota, and somewhat higher than that of Cali- 

 fornia for the same year. Thus an important part of the 

 deficiency of other counties in New York was supplied by 

 the surplus grown in the Seneca valley and its neighborhood. 



There is another district lying eastward towards the Hud- 

 son, and southward towards the Delaware, that finds a greater 

 profit in the dairy, — making a production in butter and 

 cheese worth far more than the grain })rocured from the 

 West. Not only are the home wants in the dairy products 



