58 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



One morning's sojourn in Baltimore was embraced to visit the old Marsh, or 

 principal market of the town ; and sorry am I to say that for all the extrinsic 

 essentials of light, space and cleanliness, it is far below the character of a city 

 so populous and so famed for alertness and vigor in the career of social and eco- 

 nomical improvement, on which our whole country seems to have so heartily 

 entered. The side, the center, and the fish-market houses are all too low, dark, 

 contracted and filthy, and as for the regular victualers, in their certainly not very 

 white and clean shirt-sleeves and aprons, and, for the most part, coarse and dirty 

 cloths, where there are any cloths, spread over and about their shambles — who 

 that has ever seen them both, but must be struck with the contrast, in the tout 

 ensemble, between the Baltimore and the Philadelphia markets, to the disadvant- 

 age of the former ? Would it be unreasonable to suppose, where faults are so 

 glaring in a matter of such general interest, that the conductors of the Press, 

 there and everywhere among the best of police-officers, are too much otherwise 

 occupied to traverse the Marsh Market early on Wednesdays and Saturdays ? 

 Where nods that good old sentinel over all her public concerns, the Baltimore 

 American, at that early hour ? Of what dreams its Patriot colleague ? While 

 yet the Sun has not risen to expose, nor the Clipper spread its sails to bring up 

 the lee-way of their monumental City on a point so vital to its character and do- 

 mestic comforts. Yet it must be claimed for the materiel of the Baltimore Mar- 

 ket, that while far from being deficient in the essential articles of good beef, and 

 mutton, and poultry, it excels in abundance rather than the quality of its fruit, 

 not bearing comparison with Boston in apples, pears, grapes and plums, though 

 it may boast of its peaches, and yet more of the excellence of its melons, celery 

 and other vegetables — as well as of its crabs, hard and soft. And what greater 

 delicacy than this last-named shell-fish without a shell, if in cooking it be di- 

 vested of the yellow substance — the ' fat ' — which gives it an undesirable acidity, 

 to the taste of most people ? Though the supply of excellent butter has vastly 

 increased, that seems to be an article — I mean that of the finest quality — that 

 can never overrun the demand. Waverley butter sells to-day, as the old Hillen 

 & Hampton butter did thirty years ago, for 371 cents a pound, even in June. If 

 the same facilities for the farmers were established along the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Railroad that exist on the Eastern railroads, and if the farmers and their wives 

 and daughters on the tide-waters of the Chesapeake, encouraged by the saine 

 helps, were as thrifty as those in Yankee-land, Baltimore would be of all markets 

 in the Union the best supplied with everything that can give variety and excel- 

 lence. The over-night's milk is sent perfectly fresh for use, in New-York, the 

 next morning, from a distance of 100 miles. Instead of parading their wives and 

 daughters at fashionable and crowded resorts, how much more useful if they 

 would take them occasionally on a leisurely survey of the industrious habits and 

 convenient and thrifty domestic arrangements and economy of the Northern peo- 

 ple. Of all things, an occasional excursion for personal observation, among a 

 thriving and notable people, makes the best " eye-opener,'''' as a long-headed 

 Member of Congress from Baltimore City used to express himself. 

 A word more as to 



THE INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC JOURNALS, AND THE GROWTH AND THE MEN OF BALTIMORE. 



An interesting account of the exportation of bread-stuflTs appeared recently in 

 tne Baltimore American, among the oldest, most enlightened and authentic of our 

 commercial journals — one which has grown with the growth and strengthened 

 with the strength of that flourishing city, repaying with interest, by honest and 

 efficient service to the town, all the liberal patronage it has received. On a view 

 of this lucid statement of the trade, and its constant, able advocacy of public works 

 essential to the continued prosperity of Baltimore, my mind has sometimes ram- 

 bled into reflections which brought me to the conclusion, without any reference 

 to their party biases, that the people of large towns are not generally aware hoio 

 much they owe of their growth and prosperity to the conductors of leading jour- 

 nals, watchful over all that may conduce to their development, their stability in 

 well-doing. The influence of such journals, it may be apprehended, is too often 

 felt rather than seen — enjoyed without being acknowledged. True it is that 

 individual mercantile and mechanical enterprise is indispensable, but these jour- 

 nals are no less so, to explore and indicate the available objects and channels fos 



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