314 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



opportunities of the town. The tendency of the rural popu- 

 lation of some sections of our country to abandon the ex- 

 hausted farms and seek lands nearer a populous market, is 

 by no means an element of agricultural decline. It indicates 

 rather a disposition to take advantage of those circumstances 

 which lead to more active industry and more profitable labor. 

 It is the same spirit of enterprise which has induced many 

 farmers to abandon general agriculture and devote themselves 

 to special crops, and has led the casual observer to infer that 

 the cultivation of the soil was being abandoned. I have 

 known the statistical returns of many evidently thrifty and 

 prosperous farming communities to indicate a reduction of 

 the products of the farm, and to lead to the supposition, that, 

 because the cereals and animal products were diminishing, 

 the lands were deserted. But a more careful examination 

 has always revealed the fact that it was a change in the in- 

 dustry alone which had taken place, and that for those crops 

 which met with competition from the cheap and fertile lands 

 of the West had been substituted the products of the market 

 garden, with all the profit which goes with this mode of 

 manipulating the land. As this system extends and manu- 

 facturing cities and towns multiply, the returns of our farms 

 will be largely increased, and the average yield of our land 

 per acre will be greatly enlarged. It is the intimate relation 

 between our industries which makes general farming what it 

 is, and will gradually make American farming what it should 

 be The opportunity afforded the corn and wheat growers 

 of the West and the cotton and sugar planters of the South, 

 the fruit growers of Florida and the cattle feeders of the 

 great mountain ranges, constitutes the mainspring of our 

 agriculture, strengthened as it is by constant and rapid com- 

 munication. 



Connected with the power of j^roductive lands, and the 

 varieties of climate and soil, and the demands of an indus- 

 trious and prosperous people, there goes of necessity a system 

 of transportation which constitutes one of the co-operative 

 industries of society. The energy and ingenuity of man 

 have done much to bring all natural resources under human 

 control ; but it is modern methods of transportation which 

 have given new value to lands, new opportunities to mills, 



