1859. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



of loans, of millions of pounds sterling, in aid of 

 improvements of this character. 



In America, where private individual right is 

 usually compelled to yield to the good of the 

 whole, and where selfishness and obstinacy do 

 not long stand in the pathway of progress, ob- 

 structing manifest improvement in the condition 

 of the people, we are yet far behind England, in 

 legal facilities for promoting the improvement 

 of land-culture. This is because the attention of 

 the public has not been particularly called to the 

 subject. 



Manufacturing corporations are created by 

 special acts of legislation. In many States, rights 

 to flow and ruin by inundation most valuable 

 lands along the course of rivers, and by the 

 banks of ponds and lakes, to aid tlie water-power 

 of mills, are granted to companies, and the land- 



vert the rich and slimy sediment of the pond, 

 into pestilential vapors. These waters, too, con- 

 trolled by the mill-owners, are thus let down in 

 floods in midsummer, to overflow the meadows 

 and corn-fields of the farmer on the intervales 

 and bottom lands below. 



Now while we would never advocate any at- 

 tack upon the rights of mill-owners, or ask them 

 to sacrifice their interests to those of agriculture, 

 it surely is proper to call attention to the injury 

 which the productive capacity of the soil is suf- 

 fering, by the flooding of our best tracts in sec- 

 tions of country where land is most valuable. 

 Could not mill-owners, in many instances, adopt 

 steam instead of water-power, and becoming 

 land-draining companies instead of land-drown- 

 ing companies, at least let Nature have free course 

 with her gently flowing rivers, and allow the 



owner is compelled to part with his meadows for i promise to be fulfilled, that the earth should be 

 such compensation as a committee or jury shall 'no more cursed with a flood ? 



assess. 



In almost every town in New England, there 

 are hundreds and often thousands of acres of 

 lands, that might be most productive to the far- 

 mer, overflowed half the year with water, to drive 

 some old saw-mill or grist-mill, or cotton-mill, 

 which has not made a dividend or paid expenses 

 for a quarter of a century. The whole water- 

 power, which perhaps ruins for cultivation a 

 thousand acres of fertile land, and divides and 

 breaks up farms by creating little creeks and 

 swamps throughout all the neighboring valleys, 

 is not worth, and would not be assessed by im- 

 partial men, at one thousand dollars. Yet, though 

 there is power to take the farmer's land for the 

 benefit of manufacturers, there is no power to 

 take down the company's dam for the benefit, of 

 agriculture. An old saw-mill which can only run 

 a few days in a spring freshet, often swamps a 

 half-township of land, because somebody's great 

 grandfather had a prescriptive right to flow, when 

 lands were of no value, and saw-mills were a 

 public blessing. 



There are numerous cases within our own 

 knowledge, where the very land overflowed and 

 ruined by some incorporated company, would, if 

 allowed to produce its natural growth of timber 

 and wood, furnish ten times the fuel necessary 

 to supply steam-engines to propel the machinery 

 carried by the water-power. 



Not satisfied with obstructing the streams in 

 their course, the larger companies are of late 

 making use of the interior lakes, fifty or a hun- 

 dred miles inland, as reservoirs, to keep back 

 water for the use of the mills in the summer 

 droughts. There are thousands of acres of land 

 drowned and rendered worse than useless, for 

 the water is kept up till midsummer, and drav.n 



We would ask for the land-owner, simply equal- 

 ity of rights with the mill-owner. If a legisla- 

 ture may grant the right to flow lands against 

 the will of the owner, to promote manufactures, 

 the same legislature may surely grant the right, 

 upon proper occasions, to remove dams and oth- 

 er obstructions to our streams, to promote agri- 

 culture. The rights of mill-owners are no more 

 sacred than those of land-owners, and the inter- 

 ests of manufactures are, surely, no more impor- 

 tant than those of agriculture. 



We would not advocate much interference with 

 private rights. In some of the States no special 

 privileges have been conferred upon water-power 

 companies. They have been left to procure their 

 rights of flowage, by private contract with the 

 land-ov/ners, and in such States, probably the 

 legislatures would be as slow to interfere with 

 rights of flowage, as with other rights. Yet 

 there are cases where for the preservation of the 

 health of the community and for general con- 

 venience, governments have every where exer- 

 cised the power of interfering Avith private prop- 

 erty, and limiting the control of the owners. 

 To preserve the public health, we abate as nuis- 

 ances, by process of law, slaughter-houses and 

 other establishments offensive to health and com- 

 fort, and we provide by compulsory assessments 

 upon land-owners, for sewerage, for sidewalks 

 and the like, in our cities. 



Everywhere for the public good, Ave take pri- 

 vate property for highways, upon just compen- 

 sation, and the property of corporations is thus 

 taken like that of individuals. 



Again, we compel adjacent owners to fence 

 their lands and maintain their proportion of di- 

 vision fences of the legal height, and we elect 

 fence-viewers with power to adjust equitably the 



off when a dog-day climate is just ready to con- 1 expenses of such fences. We assess bachelors 



