1889.] TRANSACTIONS. 25 



theory thateonfronts her with snch a condition. It is the same old 

 story, — the spirit that acidulates tiie tones of our ascetic friends ; 

 — of an artificial stimnlus whereof the force is impaired by use 

 or repetition, whose application and strength must be continually 

 renewed or augmented, but of which the final result is surely 

 debaucli, demoralization, and death. 



There was land of old, throughout New England that, when 

 tickled with a hoe laughed with a harvest. There was a time 

 and not so long ago but that your Secretary was an eye-witness 

 to the reckless waste, when the Terrseculturists of Illinois threw 

 their manure heaps into the nearest creek rather than be at the 

 trouble of spreading it over their fields ! Now, — agents of New 

 Hampshire and Vermont, aye, even of Berkshire in our own 

 Massachusetts, are striving to attract settlers from foreign parts, 

 — Parthians and Armenians, the dwellers at the equator and in 

 the land of the midnight sun, the saintl}' Swede in especial ! that 

 farms allowed to run to waste may once more find occupants and 

 yield taxes ! the chief end of civilized man. The alluvial soil of 

 Illinois is not yet exhausted. But the plaint of its tillers is uni- 

 versal and vents no discordant note. It is incentive to reflection 

 among themselves, so far and yet so near, and is fraught with the 

 gravest suggestions to us. The land diminishes in fertility, the 

 foreign market is denied, while the home market fails, and man 

 grows steadily poorer. Writes from Champaign, Illinois, the 

 observant correspondent of that pre-eminent newspaper, — The 

 Country Gentleman : * * * 



"Their cows and rough stock are scarcely worth 2 cts. per lb., 

 and even 300 lb. fat veal calves are difiicult to raise 3^ cts. upon. 

 The corn, oat and hay crops of 1889, for the black soil counties, 

 are scarcely more than two-thirds the average per acre of the 

 last five years, while prices for these and neat cattle are 30, if 

 not 40 or 50 per cent, lower. 



" Meanwhile the rate of taxation is rather increasing than dimin- 

 ishing, and there is no reduction in the salaries of public ofiicers." 



And most pregnant is the reflection, with which he concludes, 

 if such is the condition of Terrseculture 



" In counties on the black soil of Illinois, one of the World's 

 most fertile and favorably situated tracts of land, what can be 



