.856. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



539 



For the Neie England Farme? . 



"WANTED-LESS LAND OH MORE 

 LABOR." 



BY PROF. J. A. NASH. 



This is the title of an excellent article in a late 

 number of "Moore's Rural JVew-Yorker." Is it 

 true, that we want less land or more labor ? and 

 if so, which will be best, to diminish the land, or 

 to increase the labor ? 



Uncultivated land produces as much as cultivat- 

 ed, perhaps more. The same sun shines upon it ; 

 the same i-ains water it; the same atmosphere em- 

 bosoms it. It is the nature of land to be always 

 producing; it icill produce something. An acre in 

 Massachusetts produced more wood three hundred 

 years ago, than it does corn now. It happened 

 that wood was worth nothing then ; there was no 

 market for it. An acre on the Rocky Mountains 

 produces as much now. But whom does it benefit ? 



The province of agriculture is to make the acres 

 produce the greatest value at the time and place ; 

 or, if not the greatest value absolutely, the greatest 

 value above the cost of production, or the greatest 

 profit. It v.'ould be a great piece of folly for a shoe- 

 maker to build a shop a hundred feet long, and 

 then do in it only the work which he could do 

 •with his own hands. The interest on the outlay 

 would more than balance the income. It would be 

 possible for a former to make as unwise a distribu- 

 tion of his capital. If he should hold a hundred 

 acres of high-priced, arable land, and do no more 

 work on it than he could do with his own hands, 

 the case would be similar. The long shop would 

 be dead capital, because not in use ; and the farm 

 would be dead capital, half dead at least, because 

 he could not possibly draw out its capabilities. — 

 There is a proportion to be observed between the 

 fixed and the floating capital in every business. 

 You will not catch a shrewd merchant, in Broad- 

 way, or in Washington Street, laying out all the 

 money he can raise in a fine store, nor in the store 

 and the goods to fill it. He reserves something to 

 hire clerks with. Is there any reason why the far- 

 mer should invest everything in land, implements, 

 and stock, and leave nothing with which to hire la- 

 bor ? 



A thousand acresof land, with no labor at all on 

 it, would produce some game, some fish, if there 

 were streams on it, some wild fruits and berries, 

 and possibly, some roots, that would serve to pro- 

 long life, in case of extreme hunger. A native, 

 with his squaw and papooses, might possibly eke a 

 living from it. This would be an extreme case. — 

 Let us look at the opposite extreme. If a thou- 

 sand strong men were to work on these acres, one 

 man to each acre, the whole would soon be cleared ; 

 the rocks would be worked into walls, or so dis- 

 posed of as not to impede cultivation ; the wet 

 portions would be underdrained ; portions admit- 

 ting it would be put under irrigation ; the soils on 

 different portions of it would be mixed, by putting 

 clay upon sands, and sand upon clays ; the whole 

 would be securely fenced, and every acre would be 

 like a garden. Instead of feeding one lone family, 

 it would now give food for a population of ten 

 thousand persons. But all this might not be prof- 

 itable. A thousand dollars a day would be a large 

 sum to pay for labor. 



These are the extremes. The golden mean is 

 somewhere between ; and, depend upon it, it is not 



very near either extreme. Not a few are manag- 

 ing as if they thought it in the very neighborhood 

 of the first mentioned. If they would not invest 

 the last penny in land, and nothing in labor, they 

 would come as near to it as possible. Others may 

 be running too near the other extreme — paying 

 too much for labor in proportion to the land they 

 cultivate ; reclaiming their waste lands faster than 

 is profitable, and cultivating larger crops than they 

 can afford ; for all this is possible ; and if any one 

 knows of a well attested case of the kind, he would 

 do well to report it, that the errant farmer, whose 

 reclaimed land and large crops are Hkely to prove 

 ruinous, may have a guardian put over him in time. 



Our fathers paid fifty cents for a yard of India 

 cotton, in butter at ten cents a pound ; fifty cents 

 for writing a dunning letter of three lines to them, 

 in meal at three cents a pound ; and fifty cents for 

 an English door-lock, that would make a rogue 

 laugh, and an honest man cry, in cheese at five 

 cents a pound, or less. No wonder they did not 

 improve their farms. Their best way was to wag 

 along as easily as they could. There was no re- 

 ward for enterprise. The only wonder is how they 

 wagged at all. If they could have bought a better 

 yard of cotton for a quarter of a pound of butter, 

 instead of giving five pounds for it ; if they could 

 have paid the law-yer for his short epistle, with four 

 pounds of meal, instead of seventeen, or if they 

 could have bought an American door-lock for some 

 less than ten pounds of cheese, that would have 

 kept out all manner of rogues, and their father in- 

 to the bargain, they would have made all New 

 England a garden before our day. Why will men 

 manage their farms now just as their fathers were 

 compelled to do under the policy of George III. 

 and Lord North, and, it may almost be said, of 

 Jefterson and James Madison, so far as protection 

 to the farmer is concerned ? Then it would not 

 pay to employ labor. But will it not pay now ? 

 The price of labor is relatively lower than it was 

 then ; it takes less produce to pay a man's wages, 

 than it ever has since the fathers landed at Ply- 

 mouth. Laborers are coming in upon us, down 

 from Canada, over from Ireland, back from the far 

 West. Perhaps you say they are ignorant and dis- 

 honest. They are as honest as we are, which is not 

 saying very much for them; and they will work 

 well, if you will tell them how. It would seem as 

 if divine Providence meant that New England 

 should now become a cultivated country. Will 

 New England farmers be true to themselves, and 

 to the old cradle of American liberty ? 



Never has the encouragement for farmers to hire 

 labor, put their land to producing, and go ahead, 

 been as good as now. Present prices may not hold. 

 We have a big West to compete with on the more 

 portable items of produce. It may not be two 

 years before they will be underselling us under our 

 own noses. But it is not probable that we shall 

 again have to pay five pounds of butter for a door- 

 lock that none but a burglar would be pleased with ; 

 or seventeen pounds of veal for a yard of India cot- 

 ton, too hght for any purpose but for a millerite to 

 go up in, and not strong enough to patch a mouldy 

 cheese with. If government should do its worst, 

 it could not bring back those times. The tariff of 

 '47 shows no special favor to the farming interest, 

 and yet, farmers have had pretty good times since. 

 But how many farmers have not profited by high 

 prices the last two years — have lost the high prices, 



