556 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Dec. 



Por the New England Farmer. 

 THOROUGH DBAININQ. 



"The advantajres of thorough draining are universally recog 

 nized, and tile are for sale everywhere, * * * yet a mul- 

 tidue of her [Sew England's] purely agricultural towns are un- 

 dergoing, more or les3 rapidly, a processor depopulation." — 

 Atlantic Monthly for August. 



Finding myself solitary and alone on the sub- 

 ject of Thorough Draining, — all three of the ag- 

 ricultural editors of the Farmer, and its whole 

 phalanx of contributors, either by word or silence 

 consenting to the system, — I took an opportuni- 

 ty the other day to call upon the Commander-in- 

 chief of these forces and inquire if it were his 

 pleasure that I should report myself "not dead, 

 bu't speechless ;" or whether, after the hard hits 

 I have received, especially after the declaration 

 that "Mr. Sheriff Mechi is not such a blockhead 

 as to suppose that draining and irrigation can- 

 not be necessary on the same land," he would 

 advise me to count myself "among the missing." 

 But, reader, if it has ever been your good for- 

 tune to call on Gov. Brown, you can appreciate 

 the kindness with which he laid his finger upon 

 my pulse, and assured me that I was by no means 

 as yet hopelessly in the "ditch ;" that I might 

 speak out — might bring on my objections, and 

 he would publish them, because the Farmer gives 

 all parties a hearing ; and because, said he, one 

 of your articles may do the cause as much good 

 as two in favor of draining. Was that an equiv- 

 ocal compliment ? Did he seat me at his edito- 

 rial elbow to play sly jokes at my expense? No ; 

 he meant that I should help the cause of truth, 

 not the cause of draining ! 



As I have been charged with manifesting a 

 "spite against the English notion of underdrain- 

 ing," I ought, perhaps, to define my position. In 

 the extract with which I commenced my first ar- 

 ticle, page 134, it is said : 



"Draining, as understood thirty years ago in 

 England, meant merely the making of channels 

 to carry off surface water, and underground 

 drains to dry bogs or cut off springs. It has 

 now an entirely different vieaning in the agricul- 

 tural world." 



Now, I believe in draining our land here, as 

 that word was understood in England thirty years 

 ago, and I disbelieve in all modern "entirely dif- 

 ferent meanings ;" I hold to the policy and ne- 

 cessity of "drying bogs, cutting off springs" and 

 removing standing water, but I deny the expedi- 

 ency of draining for any other purpose — whether 

 to "give greater lungs and consequently more 

 vitality to the land," to "cause the poisonous ex- 

 crementitious matter of plants to be carried out 

 of the reach of their roots," or to "hasten the de- 

 cay of roots and other vegetable matter," in the 

 soil. In a word, where farmers do not see enough 

 of the evils of too much water to induce them to 

 throw their fields into "lands" with a "dead fur- 

 row" between, as is done in Western New York, 

 or to adopt any other cheap means to conduct 

 off the rains of spring and fall, it is unnecessary 

 to exhort them to the practice of thorough drain- 

 ing. 



To the arguments oT reasons which I have al- 

 ready presented as justifying this position, I 

 propose to add but a single one, viz. : That the 

 thorough draining of our old farms in' New Eng- 

 land i." ."^irnpli/ an iiiipo!--!^U-illUj. 



According to the census statistics of 1850, the 

 average value of farms in New England is twen- 

 ty dollars and twenty-seven cents per acre, and 

 the average value of agricultural implements to 

 each farm is $77,17. With i^^yf exceptions, the 

 ownei's of these 107,651 New England farms, 

 with the aid of their families, do all the work that 

 is done upon their premises ; consequently, if 

 ditches are to be dug, they must do the digging. 



Now, what is thorough draining ? In an Eng- 

 lish work, entitled "Principles of Agriculture, by 

 Albert D. Thayer," it is said : "The art of drain- 

 ing is one of the most difficult of all those apper- 

 taining to agricultural science." Like law and 

 medicine, it requires its learned professors. — 

 These have already been called into existence, in 

 our larger towns, and their professional services 

 are advertised in our public journals — not to dig 

 the ditches, by any means, but simply to "ad- 

 vise." 



In a late number of the Farvier, however, we 

 caught a glimpse of the ditcher himself. He 

 digs "in stiff tile clay" four feet deep, and places 

 the tile for about eleven cents a rod ! and even 

 at that price the cost of draining an acre is thirty 

 dollars ! For my own part, I turned from the 

 picture with unfeigned gratitude that "our lines 

 are cast in pleasant places," in "a land of hills 

 and valleys, that drinketh water of the rain of 

 heaven." 



For another purpose the writer of that article 

 assumes that labor costs twice and a half more 

 here than in England. Twice and a half thirty 

 dollars are seventy-five. But "fallowing, levell- 

 ing, subsoiling, &c.," on the same land, we are 

 told, cost thirty-five dollars more. Admitting 

 these to be, as I suppose they are, part and par- 

 cel of thorough draining, then, if the cost here 

 is^not about $162 per acre, what is it, according 

 to Mr. Mechi's statements ? 



True, we have a statement on page 575 of the 

 Farmer for 1856, of land being drained in Maine 

 for $67,50 per acre. But in this case the drains 

 were twice as far apart as English farmers recom- 

 mend, and only three and a half feet deep. Why 

 this liberty with "the system," why should thor- 

 ough draining be twice as thorough in England 

 as here, when the exjjerimenter himself declares 

 that "all the benefits obtained in England, and 

 more, [italics his own,] are attainable here," and, 

 also, that my "assumption that the humidity of 

 England's climate creates a necessity for drying 

 land there, which does not exist here," is one of 

 my "errors of fact ?" Did he feel something as 

 the negro did who announced to his master, "One 

 of your oxen dead — t'other too ?" Was he afraid 

 we "couldn't bore it" if he gave at once the fig- 

 ures of the actual cost of the "thorough" English 

 system ? 



But assuming either of these sums, or any oth- 

 er sum that will be named by any advocate of 

 thorough draining, as the cost per acre, and what 

 is the prospect of applying the system to farms 

 in New England that, buildings and all, are worth 

 some twenty-six dollars an acre ? Must we not 

 wait until our present population of small farm- 

 ers, with small means, shall give place, on the 

 one hand to a class of capitalists, and, on the 

 other, to a class of servile laborers ? 



But I am running wild of my text from the ar- 

 ticle in the Ad'iidic, which has been variously no- 



