THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



203 



farms, in augmenting their fertility, rather than in 

 adding to iheir size. Any man, who will take the 

 trouble (o make the calculation, may very soon 

 •convince himself of ihis lidcf, so hii^hly important 

 to all agricultural improvement. For instance, is 

 it not perfectly plain, that if we increase our crops 

 merely by increasing the surface cultivated, we 

 must add a proportionate increase of labor and 

 other means to make them, and of course have 

 our expenditures and income relatively the same 

 as belbre? We therefore gain no additional clear 

 profit, although we gain not a little additional 

 trouble in managing this increased labor. Yet al- 

 most every farmer, who has it in his power, conti- 

 nues to add negro to negro and acre to acre, when- 

 ever an opportunity offers ; and thus not only 

 fails to augment his own net income in the small- 

 est degree, but actually contributes, by his per- 

 petual buying up more and more land, without 

 improving what he already owns, to depopulate 

 the neighborhood in which he lives. In this way 

 it has happened that in many parts of Virginia a 

 single proprietor will now own many thousands of 

 acres, which half a century ago, or within a 

 shorter period, were divided into^ several distinct 

 farms, each of which sufficed for the comfortable 

 support of a diiferenl family, who might still have 

 been living on them in abundance, if the money, 

 time and labor, which it cost them to move and 

 to form other far distant settlements, had been 

 judiciously expended in improving the homes of 

 their ancestors, and the lands which gave them 

 birth. No man can doubt this, who knows, 

 half as well as I do, how capable these lands are 

 of being so improved as to yield even ten or 

 twelve times their present average product. For 

 it is a fact within my own knowledge, that many 

 of our Virginia farms formerly produced per 

 acre crops which exceeded what they now yield 

 full as much as I have stated, whilst others v^hich 

 were almost barren, when I first knew them, hav- 

 ing fallenin to the hands of impro-ving proprietors, 

 instead of the land-skinners who pre'viously own- 

 ed them, are now producing ten, fifteen, and even 

 twenty-fold as much as they did in the hands of 

 those deadly enemies to all agricultural improve- 

 ment. It may be prejudice, but I confess I have 

 always considered such men among the very 

 worst members of society ; for, although they in- 

 crease for a time the means of human subsist- 

 enccj it is solely for their own exclusive benefit, 

 without the slightest regard for the general wel- 

 fare or their own posterity; and under an abso- 

 lute certamty of ultimately impoverishing their 

 own state, by destroying the productiveness of 

 her soil to the utmost extent of their power. To 

 this deplorable situation they have reduced thou- 

 sands upon thousands of acres of our once fertile 

 soil. But with a knowledge of its capacity for 

 improvement which most of its present owners 

 possess, what should hinder them from reetorinc/ 

 these lands to their former slate, or to one still 

 more productive, since many of them are now 

 known to contain in their marl deposits the na- 

 tural means of effecting this restoration ? The 

 only obstacle in regard to these farms is, either 

 tnat sheer laziness in their 



proprietors, 



causeththeslugsard to be continually sayino- 

 himself, «' yei a little sleep, a little slumber, a li 

 folding of the hands to sleep,'' or else it is an in- 

 veterate habit of putting off from day to day 



which 



3 to 



itle 



what they wish and mean to do ; a habit, by the 

 way, which is utterly incompatible with every 

 thing like good farming. Procrastination has been 

 called "the thief of time;'' but it is infinitely 

 worse : it is the slow but deadly poisoner both of 

 mental and bodily energy, rendering the best 

 resolutions entirely abortive, and the greatest 

 physical powers nearly as useless to us as if we 

 did not possess them. 



Our population, computed by the square mile, 

 and compared with that of the northern and 

 eastern states, falls very far short of theirs, al- 

 though we have greatly the advantage of them 

 both in soil and climate. Do any of you wish to 

 know the reason'? It is simply because they 

 have been constantly and most industriously la- 

 boring to improve their lands, whilst we (with 

 few exceptions) have been as constantly treating 

 ours in a way that could not well have been 

 worse, if we had actually been laboring with 

 might and main to wear them out. I will not 

 say that such was the design of our treatment ; 

 but the effect has certainly been the same as if 

 malice prepense had instigated all our proceed- 

 ings. No state pride, no attachment to the places 

 of our nativity, no affection for kindred and friends, 

 no devotion to agriculture, as the great source 

 both of individual and national prosperity, has 

 had any such influence over us, aa to save our 

 good old Mother Virginia from the almost hope- 

 less impoverishment to which a vast portion of 

 her soil has been reduced by the neglect, the abuse, 

 and constantly exhausting culture of her improvi- 

 dent, reckless children. The deplorable conse- 

 quence of this has been, that multitudes of them 

 seem so disheartened by the prospect before them, 

 as almost to have lost the power of making the 

 necessary exertion to better their condition, al- 

 though there are now very few neighborhoods, 

 and no counties which do not afford some highly 

 laudable examples demonstrative of what rapid 

 improvement may be made of our exhausted soils, 

 simply by persevering industry and labor, judi- 

 ciously applied to the various processes by which 

 worn out lands may be restored to a highly pro- 

 ductive condition. There are no soils eo poor as 

 not to furnish to Iheir owners more or less of such 

 j materials as may be easily converted into manure; 

 for such are all substances that will rot. More- 

 over, a very large portion if not the greater part 

 of our lands below the head of tide-water, abound 

 with marl, that has never failed to restore land to 

 fertility, wherever it has been judiciously applied. 

 On farms destitute of marl, the numerous sub- 

 stances convertible into manure, aided by lime, 

 plaster of Paris and red clover, will soon efiect the 

 object, and that too without any great outlay of 

 cash, if we could only content ourselves with a 

 small, gradual beginning. But our great misfor- 

 tune is, that very few of us, even among those 

 who have least property, have yet learned to 

 practise upon the good old Scotch proverb— 

 " 3Iany a little makes a mickle.'' Hence it hap- 

 pens with such persons, that because they cannot 

 command money and labor enough to make, as it 

 were, by a hop, skip, and jump, all the improve- 

 ments they wish, they will not attempt to make 

 any ; but go on from bad to worse, until emigra- 

 tion presents itself as the only remedy for an evii 

 which seems incurable, merely because no effort 

 has been made to cure ii. How long such num- 



