NaT. 



JVecessaries the Best Product. 



221 



sor, combine, with our agricultural ignorance, 

 to form the completest system of impoverish- 

 ment, of which any other country can boast. 

 But I mean not to speak disrespectfully of 

 overseers ; they are as good as other people ; 

 nor is it their fault if their employers have 

 made their wealth and subsistence to depend 

 upon the impoverishment of half a continent. 

 The most which the land can yield, with sel- 

 dom or never improvement with a view to 

 future profit, is a point of common consent 

 and mutual need between the agriculturist 

 and his overseer; and they generally unite in 

 emptying the cup of fertility to the dregs ! 



It is discovered, in England, from experi- 

 ence, that short leases are the worst enemies 

 to agriculture — those even of twenty-one 

 years being still found, by experience, too 

 short for improvement. Must the practice 

 of hiring a man for one year, by a share of 

 the crop, to lay out all his skill and industry 

 in killing land, and as little as possible in 

 improving it, suggested by the circumstances 

 and necessities of settling a wilderness among 

 hostile savages, be kept up to commemorate 

 the pious learning of man in his primitive 

 state of ignorance and barbarity? Unless 

 this custom is abolished, the attempt to ferti- 

 lize our lands is useless. Under the frequent 

 emigrations of owners from state to state, it 

 cannot be accomplished ; impoverishment will 

 succeed, distress will follow, and famine will 

 close the scene ! It is a custom which injures 

 both employers and overseers, by gradually 

 diminishing the income of the one, and, of 

 course, the wages of the other ; while wages 

 in money would, on the contrary, correspond 

 with the system of gradual improvement, by 

 which the condition of both parties would be 

 annually bettered ; and skill in improving — 

 not a murderous industry in destroying land — 

 would soon become a recommendation to bu- 

 siness, and a thermometer of compensation." 



Arator. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Necessaries the Best Product. 



Mr. Editor, — I have been much pleased 

 and instructed by an excellent paper in the 

 Cabinet for the last month, entitled " Neces- 

 saries the best Product of Land," particularly 

 with the axiom contained in the note at the 

 foot of the 149th page, viz., " That crop 

 which gives the most food for man, and pro- 

 vender for beast, ought to have the prefer- 

 ence :" it is added, " silk and wine give 

 neither the one or the other, and, what is 

 worse, no manure." Now to these luxurious 

 crops may also be added tobacco, which is 

 proverbially an exhausting crop, yielding no- 

 thing with which to replenish the soil in any 



way; at the same time the expenses of culti- 

 vation are rarely balanced, even by a large 

 yield. 



In perusing the last number of the " Far- 

 mers' Register," which contains the essays 

 of « Arator," a writer of great talent and 

 observation, first published in the year 1809, 

 I find, at page 755 of that highly interesting 

 journal, a chapter on the culture of tobacco, 

 which deserves, I think, a place in your forth- 

 coming number, as a suitable companion to 

 " Necessaries the best Product," and, beino- 

 written, as it was, by a resident of that to- 

 bacco-growing state, Virginia, and one who 

 had been engaged in the culture of the plant, 

 and had carefully calculated its cost, the ac- 

 count may be relied upon. I. W. 

 January 5, 1841. 



"The extent of country yet devoted to the 

 cultivation of this plant, entitles it to a place 

 in an agricultural work, whose object it is to 

 kill bad habits, and to be killed itself, in turn, 

 by a complete system of cultivation. The 

 preservableness of tobacco endows it with the 

 rare capacity of waiting for a market ; and 

 this circumstance constituted a recommenda- 

 tion which induced me to cultivate it, at- 

 tentively, two years ; and although both crops 

 succeeded beyond the medium calculation, 

 still the experiments exhibited results, con- 

 clusively proving the propriety of its abandon- 

 ment; and these results were all with ease 

 reduced to figures, for it was easy to fix the 

 value of labour bestowed on an acre of to- 

 bacco, and on its crop after severance, and on 

 an acre of corn or wheat with the prepara- 

 tion of its crop also for market ; it was as 

 easy to ascertain the produce of equal soils, 

 and prices were settled by sales. Such esti- 

 mates demonstrated the loss of grow in o- to- 

 bacco, merely on the score of annual profit, 

 without taking into account the formidable 

 obstacle it constitutes to the improvement of 

 land : and this objection is not founded upon 

 the erroneous opinion that it is peculiarly an 

 impoverisher ; on the contrary, my impression 

 was, that it was less so than any other crop 

 I knew of, except cotton and the sweet po- 

 tatoe, but upon its enormous consumption of 

 labour, and its dimimiiive returns of manure. 

 It would startle even an old planter to see an 

 exact account of the labour devoured by aa 

 acre of tobacco, and the preparation of the 

 crop for market; and even supposing that 

 crop to amount to the extraordinary quantity 

 of one thousand pounds, he would find it sel- 

 dom, if ever, producing a profit, upon a fair 

 calculation ; he would be astonished to dis- 

 cover how often he had pas.'^ed over the land, 

 and the tobacco through his hands ; in fallow- 

 ing, hilling, cutting off hills, planting, re- 

 planting, toppings, suckerings, weedincs, cut- 

 tings, picking up, removing out of the ground 



