05 



GENESEE FARMER. 



July. 1845 



THE EDITOR'S REPORT on AGRICULTURE 

 IN THE ASSEMBLY. 

 It is stated in my report that " no class in the 

 community give so much severe muscular toil for 

 $100, as do the common field laborers in the State 

 of New York." A reviewer in the Ithaca Chronicle 

 whom I take to be a limb of the law, thus comments 

 on this and other statements of a similar import : 



" Strange that a man of Dr. Lee's science and ca- 

 pacity should put lorlh, in a grave public document, 

 statements so grossly erroneous, and so well calcu- 

 lated to array one class in society in hostility to the 

 other. How stands the case ? The lawyer com- 

 mences, say at eighteen, and spends seven years of 

 his life in acquiring a profession, before he can pro- 

 fessionally earn a smgle dollar, and during this whole 

 time he must eat, drink and wear. An able bodied 

 young man can earn ten dollars per month the year 

 round, besides board and washing, which would 

 make it equal to fifteen dollars per month, or $180 

 per year. Seven yeaars of lost time would there- 

 fore be equal to ^1200. Tuition fees, clothing, &c. 

 would cost about $150 per year, which for seven 

 years would be $1,050. After he is admitted he 

 must have about $500 worth of books, which is a 

 small allowance. Here then is spent in time and 

 money, nearly $3000, before the lawyer is ready to 

 do business. And after that, some ten years are 

 spent in a precarious livelihood, in convincing com- 

 munity that he has sufficient skill and capacity to be 

 entrusted with their business. In this professional 

 race, it is fair to say, that nine out of ten essential- 

 ly fail of success." 



I concede the entire truth of the whole case, as 

 made out by this member of the Bar. But I demand 

 a plain and satisfactory reason u-hy il is that so many 

 worthy and intelligent young men of eighteen are 

 willing to forsake the axe, the scythe and the plow— 

 throw away seven long years in the prime of life, 

 and spend $3,000, with a certainty that after ten 

 years of professional competition, they will stand 

 ^^nine chances in ten to fail of success ?" 



There is an ever active, a living cause which ev- 

 ery where produces this lamentable result. What 

 is it ? It operated with equal force to induce some 

 nine hundred young men to attend, at a large ex- 

 pense, the four Medical Colleges in this State, at 

 their last terms ; while the profession is so crowded 

 that two or three doctors can easily do all their bu- 

 siness by riding one horse, in almost any town in 

 the State. The Regents of ttie University in their 

 Report state that over eleven thousand students in 

 our Academies alone, are now studying the classics- 

 Greek and Latin. How little do all these liberal ap- 

 propriations benefit the 500,000 field laborers, ol 

 whom my Report speaks as giving so much hard 

 work for 100 silver dollars ! 



When the writer of this was eighteen years of 

 age, the most he could get for chopping 100 cords 

 of hard wood, and board himself, was $30. At a 

 subsequent period of his life he has received 830 for 

 amputating a limb. Now, if one that has had expe- 

 rience in the art of skilful chopping, and the art of 

 surgery may know auy thing of either, I assert that 

 it takes about as much time and labor to learn one 

 art as the other. I question both the justice and the 

 policy that compels the same person as farmer L. 

 to work hard two months and chop 100 cords of wood 

 for $30, while you pay him as doctor L. an equal 

 sum for cutting off a leg about as easily as he could 



fell a basswood sapling. The practical efiect of this 

 great disparity of compensation is, to make, at a ru- 

 inous sacrifice of time and money, about thirty t'mes 

 as many surgeons as there are are jobs requiring 

 their professional services. 



If you promise my son as high a reward for one 

 day's work as a good lawyer, as you will give him 

 for ten day's work as a good fieli laborer, then you 

 offer him a clear bounty of 1000 per cent to go into 

 a lawyer's office in this city, rather than on to a 

 farm, and sweat, and toil, and burn in the sun. If 

 he can find employment only one day in ten, as an 

 attorney, he will receive as much in the course of 

 the year as he would by tilling the earth, and have 

 nine-tenths of his time to improve his mind, and pre- 

 pare himself for the highest public honors. If it be 

 requisite for him to study the languages, or mathe- 

 matics to qualify him for any professional pursuit, 

 there are thousands of good schools, supported in 

 part by a tax on the farmers, for that purpose. But 

 if it be deemed advisable to give him a knowledge of 

 agricultureal geology, chemistry and physiology, ac- 

 cording to the recent i iiprovements in those sci- 

 ence, he must go, where other young men in this 

 State have gone, to Edinburgh, Paris, or Giesen. 



It is own '23 years since Judge Buel was chairman 

 of the agricultural committee in the House, and first 

 began to make his great but unsuccessful efforts, to 

 establish at least one Agricultural School in this 

 State. Shall another whole generation pass off the 

 stage before the young men who are to follow the 

 noble profession of Agriculture, shall have an op- 

 portunity to study its science in a truly scientific 

 manner, without being compelled to leave this great 

 agricultural State and go 3,500 miles to the mon- 

 archial governments of Europe ? 



In his Report of 1823, Judge Euel alludes to the 

 facts that Union College had received $418,000, Ha- 

 milton $116,000, and that Academies were paid mo- 

 ney from the treasury in proportion to the nnmber of 

 pupils studying the dead languages. He then truly 

 predicted that this forcing system of making profes- 

 sional gentlemen, would result, as my legal friend 

 from Ithaca says it has, in creating ten times more 

 lawyers than the public good requires. Instead of 

 resisting to the hour of his death the patriotic efforts 

 of the lamented Buel to elevate the young farmers 

 of this State—" to improve both the soil and the 

 mind;"— and instead of abusing the chairman of the 

 committee on agaiculture for the last two years, for 

 stating a few wholesome truths, all liberal minded 

 men of all pursuits should lend their assistance to 

 unite true science and solid learning with the Rural 

 Labor of New York. 



When I stated in my Report that " common field 

 laborers" as a class gave much more hard work for 

 $100 than is paid by the mechanic, the merchant, 

 the lawyer or the physician for a like sum, it never 

 once occurred to me that any one could possibly tor- 

 ture the remark into a censure, or implied reproach 

 on those classes of the community. One reason why 

 rural industry is comparatively so poorly paid, is thus 

 explained in that Report : 



" The laws established by the Creator of the uni- 

 verse, which govern all the changes in the form and 

 properties of matter, whether in a crude mineral or 

 in an organized condition, making the living tissues of 

 plants and animals, are as uniform and unerring as iha 

 laws that regulate the rising and setting of the sun. 

 By studying the operation of these laws, the prac- 

 tical agriculturist is often able to effect a result in a 



