NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



in devising such a plan, has he got to depend en- 1 country, for years, steadily opposed theintroduc- 

 tirely on his own experience or sagacity. Books' tion of farm machinery of all sorts, notwithstand- 

 and agricultural journals are at hand, containing ing their wages and their comforts were as stead- 

 the results of other men's experience, and all hejily increasing. 



has to do is to adapt such information to the Now that along experience has proved that 

 wants of his own case. A very little head-work all this croaking about the injury done to the la- 

 of this sort would pay well. It would pay in clean' borer and the small proprietor, by machinery, is 

 cultivation. Chess, red-root, quack-grass, Cana- without any foundation, I was surprised that a 

 da thistles, butter-cups, daisies, and what not, man of the intelligence of your correspondent 

 would hide their heads ; and grubs, wire-worms, should lift his warning voice against the applica- 

 and all manner of insects, would rapidly diminish,: tion of steam to agriculture. AVhy does he not 

 if not wholly disappear. It would pay in the in- j object to its use in driving the printing press, 

 creased and prolonged fertility of the land, and \ and in manufacturing paper ? It would take 



in more bountiful crops. — Am. Agriculturist, 



For the New England Farmer. 



"AGHICULTURAL PSOGBESS." 



Mr. Editor : — Where can your correspondent 

 have been the last fifty years — asleep with Dr, 

 Franklin's fly? I should suppose he had just 

 waked out of a half-century nap, from the argu- 

 ments he uses against the application of steam to 

 agriculture. They are precisely the same argu- 

 ments made use of fifty years ago, against the 

 use of steam and water power in the manufacture 

 of cotton and wool, and subsequently, to the ap- 

 plication of steam to locomotion. 



It was said, "people would be collected into 

 manufacturing villages, and become slaves to 

 the loom-lords. Our daughters, not finding em- 

 ployment at home, would assemble in these villa- 

 ges', and would lose their health and innocence. 

 That those who now live by spinning and weav- 

 ing, wouTd be thrown out of employment, and be- 

 come beggars." When it was proposed to apply 

 steam to the moving of rail-cars, it was said that 

 "stage-coaches and baggage wagons were to be 

 thrown out of business, and there would be no 

 demand for horses, and the farmers would have 

 to give up the raising of them, and that the ten- 

 dency of the use of steam was to lower the rate 

 of wages." But have the results confirmed the 

 forebodings of the fogies of those days ? Have 

 our daughters lost then- innocence in the cotton 

 mills, and become slaves to their proprietors ? 

 Have the spinners v.inl weavers in the family 

 found any want of employment? Has the rate 

 of wages been reduced ? The truth is, there are 

 more horses em.ployed in transporting passengers 

 and freight to and from the railroads, than were 

 formerly employed in running stage coaches and 

 baggage wagons, and horses are worth much 

 :i. .If, itnd pay much better for raising, than they 

 did before the iron horse was invented. 



The population of Massachusetts has more 

 than doubled in forty years, and yet the rate of 

 wages has more than doubled in that time. So 

 far from people having been thrown out of em- 

 ployment, they have imported thousands of male 

 and female laborers, and pay them, especially fe- 

 males, more than twice as much as they did forty 

 years ago, and the comforts and conveniences of 

 life enjoyed by the laboring classes have increased 

 in at least an equal ratio. 



Almost every labor-saving machine has had to 

 encounter the same objections. The first saw- 

 mill erected in England was burned down, be- 

 cause, it was said, it would deprive the hand-saw- 

 yers of employment. The farm-laborers in that 



twenty men to turn the cranks of the presses 

 that are moved by one small engine. Twenty 

 families are thus deprived of bread ! The gentle- 

 man need not borrow trouble lest the hills and 

 valleys of New England should be swept of their 

 varied beauty, and reduced to broad levels, for 

 the manufacture of corn and potatoes by steam. 



If capitalists, associated or single, can profita- 

 bly cultivate the earth by steam, it must be where 

 the surface is adapted to such culture. If it can 

 succeed on such portions of the earth's surface, 

 M'hy, let it. I have only to say, "God speed the 

 plow," whether moved by the power of steam or 

 muscles. In either case, bread will be increased, 

 and food for the laborer and his family will be 

 cheaper. If steam can be made to work the soil, 

 and gather the crops, and turn the mills and the 

 presses, on the broad plantations of the South, 

 more economically than negro power, why, I say 

 again, "God speed" the plow," even if it be a steam 

 plow ; and who knows, Mr. Editor, but this is to 

 be the great engine by which slavery is to be 

 ended ? When the steam plow is perfected, will 

 not some Yankee capitalists fire it up on the 

 pampas of Texas, and raise sugar at a cheaper 

 rate than it can be done by human muscles ? 

 Who can tell but we shall yet do our abolition by 

 steam? Seriously, I think the sugar-growers of 

 Louisiana have quite as much to apprehend from 

 the steam plow, as have the small farmers of 

 New England. Steamer. 



Dec. 18, 1858. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 UNDERDRAINING™"IT -WIIiI. PAY!" 



Mr. Editor : — Last fall I wrote you under 

 the title, "Underdraining — will it pay ?" — that I 

 intended to underdrain a piece of wet, cold, un- 

 productive land, and asked your advice in the 

 matter. It was kindly given, for which I would 

 return many thanks. 



At that time I had a presentiment that it would 

 not be a paying operation, but as the land was 

 nearly worthless, as it was, I resolved to under- 

 drain it ; which I did with stone, sinking the 

 ditches about three and one-half feet deep. The 

 bottom of the drains was constructsd like an 

 ordinary culvert, then filled with cobole stones 

 to one foot of the surface ; upon these stones, 

 shavings or evergreen boughs were placed, to 

 prevent the dirt from filling the interstices, then 

 covered with dirt, reserving the sod for the barn- 

 yard. 



The result, I will briefly state. The piece 

 drained contained a little less than four acres. 

 Last year it was mowed, and produced but two 



