54 TILE DRAINAGE. 



age of a large part of each farm is practiced, with some live 

 stock and a rotation of crops. The dairy regions of the 

 Western Reserve are good samples of the former, while 

 Stark and Wayne and the Miami Valley counties are good 

 samples of the latter. Formerly in the dairy regions, as al- 

 ready intimated, scarcely an acre was plowed on each farm ; 

 all the flour and even most of the potatoes and vegetables 

 were bought, and not more than 15 to 20 cows could be kept 

 on each hundred acres, and even these at the expense of 

 considerable costly mill feed. Under such exclusive dairy- 

 ing, with permanent pastures and meadows, when prices of 

 dairy products declined soon after the war, very many farm- 

 ers, failing to make a living, sold their clay farms, usually to 

 their more forehanded neighbors (who thus increased their 

 grazing area), and moved west or into the towns. Houses 

 and barns for a time went to decay on farms thus deserted 

 and massed into larger ones ; farms depreciated fully one- 

 half in market value; country schools and churches lan- 

 guished, both for lack of funds and of attendance, and a de- 

 crease of rural population and prosperity occurred, not unlike 

 that in England some 300 years ago under the almost ex- 

 clusive grazing and decadence of tillage induced by the 

 famous u fine-wool craze." 



The way out of this for us here has begun to come by a 

 gradual return to or beginning of tillage ; for the plow is the 

 forerunner of civilization, and the promoter of agricultural 

 wealth. Under surface drainage by plowing in high narrow 

 lands, and heavily manuring, good crops of cereals and veg- 

 etables may usually be grown on clayey soils, and the heavy 

 drain be stopped for family flour and potatoes and fruit, and 

 mill feed for the dairy. But the possible area of tillage is 

 very small under this system. I believe that this sort of 

 land, aggregating perhaps a third or a quarter of the area of 

 the State of Ohio, can never be made profitable for extended 

 agriculture, general farming, and fruit, grain, and vegetable 

 growing, except by gradually tile-draining a few acres each 



