90 Farmers^ Miscellany [July, 



LETTERS ON THE ADAPTATION OF FARMING TO 

 CIRCUMSTANCES. 



BY AGRICOLA. 

 LETTER No. I. 



Gentlemen, — An article which appeared in the April No. of 

 your Journal has arrested my attention, on the impossibility of the 

 East offering any competition to the West in the ordinary pro- 

 ducts of the farm, and if I had time, I should take pleasure in in- 

 vestigating the matter at large, in some important points which I 

 think the author of that communication has neglected. The fact 

 is a very important one, that farmers in the middle and eastern 

 states are wasting their energies, and throwing aw^ay their re- 

 sources, in the hopeless effort to produce the same articles that 

 are grown in the new states, and to sell them in their own mar- 

 kets at a price which will fay the interest on the value of their 

 land — then, the expense of cultivation — and lastly, the cost of 

 getting them to market — and after all this, yield a fair profit. 

 These four particulars must strike you, as they perhaps often have, 

 as obstacles of no small magnitude in the way of the eastern 

 farmer. 



The greatest of them is unquestionably the first, and is fairly 

 and satisfactorily examined, quite at large, by your April corres- 

 pondent. Col. T. J. Carmichael. In fact, he has done justice, as 

 far as possible in the short space he employs, to all these hind- 

 rances, and it really strikes me that if our farmers would now 

 " think on these things," a change of immense magnitude would 

 be brought about. 



It seems to be a settled conviction in the minds of all our ag-. 

 riculturists now-a-days, that, if a farmer does not grow a certain 

 article for the market, yet, if he is a consumer of that article, he 

 must at least grow as much as he consumes. No idea can be 

 more false, nor founded upon more fallacious grounds, as may be 

 shown in very few words, not in the shape of argument, but ap- 

 peal to every man's own practices in his pursuits. It would be 



