14 



NATIONAL, AGRICULTURAL, 

 CONGRESS. 



A RETROSPECT OF AMERICAN 

 AGRICULTURE. 



By W. C FLAQQ. 



Fellow Members of the National Agricultural 

 Congress : In coming before you at this, our 

 Fifth Annual Meeting, to deliver the address 

 which the position I have the honor to occupy 

 requires, the place and the year suggest the 

 proper topic of discourse. Standing at the birth 

 place of the American nation, at the close of the 

 first century of its existence, it is natural that 

 our thoughts should revert to the past condition 

 and progress of our American Agriculture. 



American Agriculture was peculiar in the fact 

 that it placed a large body of civilized inhabi- 

 tants on the virgin soil of the New World, under 

 a climate very unlike that of the parts of Europe 

 from which our immigration came. Yet. during 

 the two centuries and a half which we may say 

 in round numbers covers our civilized agricult- 

 ural history we may be said to have rapidly run 

 over the usual course of agricultural develop- 

 ment. 



AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 



Our progenitors, as in other countries, first 

 commenced to gather the spontaneous products 

 of the forest and flood. They were fishermen, 

 hunters and woodsmen, rather than farmers; 

 just as many of our inhabitants in the wilds of 

 Maine and Oregon are to-day. There succeeded 

 a period of pastoral agriculture, not so well de- 

 fined in the wooded Atlantic States but marking 

 a distinct stage in the great prairies of the West 

 and Southwest. During this period the breeding 

 and grazing of cattle, horses and even sheep and 

 swine, alternated with hunting, fishing and other 

 occupations of the backwoodsmen. We see this 

 going on in Texas, Kansas and Colorado to-day. 

 Next in order, apparently, came a one idea agri- 

 culture in the form of growing a staple upon 

 which the farmer risked his whole chances of 

 success, and which occupied but a small portion 

 of his time, leaving abundant leisure for more 

 savage pursuits during the rest of the year. This 

 was seea in the tobacco culture of the Atlantic 

 coast, in the early day, and in the cotton culture 

 of the South at a later period. It is seen in a 

 later and modified form in the wheat culture of 

 the Genesee valley and of the Northwestern and 

 Pacific States. It has generally proved, in the 

 long run, exhaustive and impoverishing, and 

 consequently is succeeded by mixed agriculture 

 in which the farmer seeks a diversity of crops 

 according to his intelligence; and attempts to 

 check the waste of fertility which is going on. 

 Not unf requently the alternative of abandoning 

 the worn-out lands has been chosen, and real es- 

 tate declines in price, and population diminishes 



while the farmer and his family seek "fresh 

 fields and pastures new" in the Great West- 

 Such is now the condition of parts of New Eng- 

 land, Virginia and other states. In a few places 

 only we have reached the point of development 

 known as intensive agriculture and which may 

 be rather called market gardening than strictly 

 agriculture. Our market gardeners and nur- 

 serymen seem more and more to shelter them- 

 selves and their products under glass, and this 

 again suggests that the violent alternations of 

 our climate may prevent the adoption of inten- 

 sive agriculture in many parts of our Union. 



RAPID PROGRESS OF THIS DEVELOPMENT IN 

 AMERICA. 



All these various phases of agricultural pro- 

 gress have been experienced in our country in a 

 brief space of time, and somewhat modified by 

 the general diffusion of trade, may be all seen at 

 work in different sections of our country to-day. 

 This somewhat confuses the understanding in 

 reviewing the agricultural history of our coun- 

 try; but the difficulty is more apparent than 

 real. 



ABORIGINAL AGRICULTURE. 



Although the western world has been discov- 

 ered nearly 400 years, the first permanent settle- 

 ments in the notably agricultural states of our 

 Union are hardly two centuries and three-quar- 

 ters old. Previous to that time, and indeed for 

 many years after, American agriculture was the 

 art of usually unskilled Indians, and occupied 

 but a very small part of our arable land. The 

 Plymouth settlers of 1620 found the red men 

 growing corn, the squash, the pumpkin, a spe- 

 cies of bean, a kind of sun-flower and tobacco. 

 Their hoes were made of clam shells, or of the 

 shoulder blades of the moose. Their manure 

 was fish, in the hill. Hendrick Hudson in hi 

 first visit to the river that has received his name 

 says that he saw corn and beans enough to 

 freight three ships. The author of the history of 

 New York states that three to four hundred 

 acres were found in cultivation about some of 

 the Indian villages. In the country of the Sen- 

 ecas in 1687 the forces of the Marquis de Nou- 

 ville claimed to have destroyed 1,200,000 bushels 

 of maize. This seems an extraordinary story ; 

 but over half of our Illinois counties each pro- 

 duce annually a much greater average. The 

 early settlers of Virginia bought such an amount 

 of corn from the natives that we may suppose it 

 was grown there also to a considerable extent. 

 The Indians of the new Gulf States were still 

 more advanced. They cultivated maize, peas, 

 beans, pumpkins, melons and sweet potatoes. 

 De Soto and his followers in their romantic raid 

 found great stores of corn and even of corn meal 

 among nations that had passed from the condi- 

 tion of hunters to that of a fixed tillage. This 

 was in the lower Mississippi Valley. Still far- 

 ther West the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico 

 and Aiizona have for an indefinite period prose- 



