MONTHLY 



JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



VOL. U. JANUARY, 1847. NO. 7. 



MEMOIR OF ELI WHITNEY, 



INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN. 



The Farmer of Mount Vernon scarcely did full justice to the benefactors of 

 the Agriculture of a country, when he declared, in respect of that most important 

 of all national concerns, "I know of no pursuit in which more real important 

 service can be rendered to any country, than by improving its Agriculture.'''' A 

 yet higher and juster estimate of the value of such services was pronounced by 

 the celebrated Grecian warrior and historian, in saying that he considered Agri- 

 culture as the "nursing mother of all the arts." "Where it succeeds," he added, 

 " the arts all thrive ; but where the earth is suffered to be uncultivated, there 

 the arts all perish." It is but too true that men — especially public men, who 

 have the public interests in charge — rarely reflect on the absolute connection be- 

 tween Agriculture and all other pursuits, and how positively all of them depend 

 for their prosperity on the prosperity of agricultural labor. Like the blessings 

 of good health, and the vital importance of the air we breathe, in the daily en- 

 joyment of them we forget that they are absolutely indispensable not only to the 

 comforts of life, but to life itself. 



What, it may truly be asked, would soon be the condition of every class of so- 

 ciety, and every human employment, were the implements of husbandry to be 

 lost, and with them all knowledge of the art of cultivating the earth, from which, 

 the multiplied and various fruits of civilization spring as directly as the ripe com 

 itself springs from the seed? Who does not see that man, thrown back into a 

 state of nature, to contend for very life against the birds of the air and the beasts 

 of the forest, famine would soon stalk abroad, and ignorance and barbarism re- 

 sume their empire over the earth. Does it not, then, follow that he who most 

 improves the implements and the knowledge of this great art — which lies at the 

 base of all others, as the pedestal at the base of the monument — by thus multi- 

 plying the means of subsistence, so far releases the mind from sordid and corrod- 

 ing cares, opens to genius the field for useful invention, and entitles himself to 

 the highest consideration and reward that a discernmg people have it in their 

 power to bestow ! Nay, in what country, it may be asked, have any arts long 

 flourished, where those by whose genius and labors they have been most advanced 

 have been recompensed with neglect and ingratitude? Yet, shame to say, has 

 not that been too often the fate, in our country, of those plain, unpretending mea 



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