No. 3. 



Philadelphia Agricultural Exhibition. 



Ill 



The same want of neatness pervailes the exterior of 

 onr dwellings. We look in vain for the trim grass-plot, 

 the nice bonier, the roses, the climbing vines, and all 

 the luxuriance of our native wild flowers. These cheap 

 and easy works — which seem trifles— make up tlie great 

 mass of our enjoyments : they are the innocent occupa- 

 tions of the young members of the family — the elegant 

 luxury of them all; and they impress even a passing 

 stranger with a sense of the taste and ease of the I'armer. 



In fruits, too, we are deticient. Our climate invites 

 ns to plant; and there is scarcely a single fruit which 

 will not grow in the open air, and all of them prosper 

 with a little shelter. Undoubtedly there are insects 

 which infest them; but these, care will exterminate. 

 Undoubtedly some species are short-lived ; but it is easy 

 to provide a succession — and even many productions 

 which we used to think uncongenial to our climate, 

 will succeed if we will only try them. For instance, I 

 am satisfied, fVoin my own experience, that every 

 farmer may have his patch of grapes quite as readily 

 as he can his patch of beans or peas. He has only to 

 plant his cuttings, as he would Indian corn, at suffi- 

 cient distances to work them with the hoe-harrow. 

 They will live through the winter without any cover- 

 ing and with less labour than Indian corn, because the 

 corn requires replanting every year, while the vines 

 will last for a century. He will thus provide a healthful 

 pleasant fruit for his family use, or a profitable article 

 for the market. 



I was about to name one more impro\'ement, but t 

 hesitate about it — I mean the substitution of oxen for 

 horses on farms. All the theory is in favour of the ox. 

 He costs little, works hard, he eats little, and when we 

 have done with him he is worth more than when we 

 began — whereas a horse costs much, eats much, and 

 when he dies is worth comparatively nothing. Yet, 

 after all, it will be difficult to bring the ox into fashion. 

 He has a failing which, in this country, is more fatal 

 than madness to a dog — he cannot " go ahead" — and it 

 Beems a severe trial for our impatient American nature 

 to creep behind an ox-plough, or to doze in an ox-cart. 

 And then there is a better reason, in small farms, 

 where both oxen and horses cannot be kept, for the jnc- 

 ference of the horse. The ox can do only farm-work, 

 and is utterly useless for the road. He is of no benefit 

 to the farmer's family. We can neither make a visit 

 with him, nor go to church with him, nor go to court 

 with him— and if the present immense political assem- 

 blies are to continue in fashion, they would be like the 

 buffalo meetings in the prairies, and it would be more 

 difficult than it now is in political conventions to find 

 out whose ox gored his neighbour's. 



There was one caution which I would have ventured 

 to offer some years ago — against the indulgence of ex- 

 pensive habits of living, and an undue preference of 

 things foreign, over the fruits of our own industry— but 

 which, I rejoice to think, is no longer necessary. Long 

 may it continue so. Simplicity and frugality are the 

 basis of all independence in farmers. If our mode of 

 living be plain, it belongs to ourcondition — if our man- 

 ners seem cold or even rough, they are at least natural 

 — and their simple sincerity will gain nothing by being 

 polished into duplicity. Though Italian mantel-pieces 

 and folding-doors are indispensable to happiness in cities, 

 they are not necessary to the welcome of country hos- 

 pitality. If a finer gloss be given to foreign fabrics, 

 let us be content with the simpler dresses which come 

 from our own soil and our own industry ; they may 

 ^not fit us quite as well, but rely on it, they become us 

 far better; and if we nmst needs drink, let us prefer 

 tlie unadulterated juice of our own orchards to all exo- 

 tic fermentations— even to that bad translation into 

 French of our own cider called champagne. 



I have spoken of farms and of farming, let me add a 

 few words about the farmer. The time was, when it 

 was the fashion to speak of the Pennsylvania farmer 

 as a dull, plodding person, whose proper representative 

 was the Conestoga horse by his side ; indiflerent to the 

 education of his children, anxious only about his 

 large barn, and when the least cultivated part of the 

 farm was the parlour. These caricatures, always exag- 

 gerated, have passed away, and the Pennsylvania 

 farmer takes his rank among the most intelligent of his 

 countrymen, with no indisposition for improvements 

 beyond the natural caution with which all new things 

 ehould be considered before they are adopted. But an 

 nnwillingne.ss to try what is new, forms no part of the 

 Amiirican character. How can it be, since our whole 



government is a novelty — our whole system of laws is 

 undergoing constant changes — and we are daily en- 

 countering, in all the walks'of life, tilings which startle 

 the more settled habits of the old world. When such 

 novelties are first presented, the European looks back 

 to know what the past would think of it— the Ameri- 

 can looks forward to find how it will aft'ect the future— 

 the European thinks of his grandfathers— the Ameri- 

 can of his grandchildren. There was once a prejudice 

 against all these things— against what wascalled theory 

 and book -farming — but that absurdity has i)asscd away. 

 In all other occupations, men desire to know how others 

 are getting on in the same pursuits elsewhere; they 

 inform themselves of what is passing in the world, and 

 are on the alert to discover and adopt improvements. 

 The farmers have few of these advantages— they do not 

 meet daily at exchanges to concentrate all the news of 

 commerce— they have no factories, where all that is 

 doing among their competitors abroad is discussed — no 

 agents to report the slightest movements which may 

 affect their interests. They live apart — they rarely 

 come together, and have nri concert of action. Now, 

 this defect can be best supplied by reading works de- 

 voted to their interests, because these may fill up the 

 leisure hours which might otherwise be wasted in idle- 

 ness or misemployed in dissipation— and as some sort 

 of newspaper is almost a necessary of life, let us se- 

 lect one which, discarding the eternal violence of party 

 politics, shall give us all that is useful or new in our 

 profession. This Society has endeavoured to promote 

 such a one in the Farmers' Cabinet, a monthly paper, 

 exclusively occupied wilh the pursuits of agriculture — 

 where we may learn what is doing in our line, over all 

 the world, at so cheap a rate, that for a dozen stalks 

 of corn, or a bushel of wheat or potatoes, we may have 

 a constant source of pleasing and useful information. 

 I think, however, that we must prepare ourselves for 

 some startling novelties in farming. We were taught 

 in our youth to consider fire and water as the deadliest 

 foes. They are at last reconciled, and their union has 

 produced the master-power of the world. Steam has 

 altered the whole routine of human labour — it has 

 given to England alone, the equivalent in labour of 

 four hundred millions of men. As jet, commerce and 

 manufactures alone have felt its influence, but it can- 

 not be that this gigantic power will long be content to 

 remain shut up in factories and ships. Rely upon it, 

 steam will before long run oft" the track into the fields, 

 for, of all human emiiloynients, farm-work is at this 

 moment the most dejiendent on mere manual labour. 

 Be not, therefore, surprised if we yet live to see some 

 steam plough making its hundred furrows in our fields 

 — or some huge engine, like the extinct mammoth, rov- 

 ing through the western forests, and mowing down the 

 woods, like acradler in the harvest-field. Wild as this 

 seems, there is nothing in it stranger than what we 

 have all witnessed already. When Fulton and Oliver 

 Evans first talked to us about the steam-boat and the 

 rail-road, we thought them insane, and already we en- 

 joy more than they ever anticipated in tlieir most san- 

 guine moments. One of these applications of steam — 

 the raising of water for agriculture — I have already at- 

 tempted, in my own small way. You know that the 

 greatest enemy of our farming is the drought of midsum- 

 mer, when all vegetation withers, and the decaying 

 crops reproach us with suffering the magrftficent rivers 

 by their side to pass away. In the southern climates of 

 the old world, men collect with great toil the smallest 

 rills, and make them wind over their fields— the liand- 

 bucket of Egypt, the water-wheel of Persia, all the toil- 

 some contrivance of manual labour, are put in requisi- 

 tion to carry freshness and fertility over fields not want- 

 ing them more than our ow n. With far greater advan- 

 tages, absolutely nothing has yet been done in that 

 branch of cultivation; may we not hope that these feeble 

 means of irrigation may be superseded by steam, when 

 a few bushels of coal may disperse over our fields, from 

 our exhaustless rivers, abundant supplies of water. 



All these improvements which may adorn or benefit 

 our farms, are recommended to us not only by our own 

 individual interests, but by the higher sentiment of our 

 duty to the country. This is essentially a nation of 

 farmers. No where else is so large a portion of the 

 community engaged in farming ; no where else are the 

 cultivators of the earth more independent or so pow- 

 erful. One would think that in Europe the great busi- 

 ness of life was to put each other to death ; for so large 

 a proj)ortion of men are drawn from the walks of pro- 



