474 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGIllCULTUUE. 



languishes, in any part of the country with which we are familiar. This de- 

 cline, or stationary condition, results, in our judgment, from defective legisla- 

 tion, the tendency of which is to disperse instead of concentrating our popula- 

 tion according to its natural increase, at least on the seaboard. Much more 

 frequently than agriculturists are aware, the folicy and action of Govern- 

 ments — State and Federal— silently influence their condition and blight their 

 prospects. The policy most congenial to the prosperity of the farmer, is that 

 which most directly tends to bring the manufacturer and all other consumers of 

 the fruits and products of his labor, nearest to his farm, so that as little time 

 may be lost, and as little money expended in the business of exchange as possi- 

 bk. Perhaps no country exists, unless it be exclusively a Cotton country, from 

 which a greater proportion of its products is carried entirely away and sold off 

 the farm than from the Eastern shore of Maryland — indeed from all Maryland 

 and Virginia ; leaving but little, even of its offal, to replenish the land on which 

 , it grew. It has no consumers near at hand except its producers, or not one- 

 fourth as many as it ought to have, with its manulacturing power, and chiefly, 

 hence, no increase, but rather a falling off of fopulation for forty years ! 

 How fortunate for that noble region of country — we allude to the Eastern shore 

 of Maryland and Virginia, destined by Nature apparently to be, from the Capes 

 of the Delaware and Chesapeake up to the Pennsylvania line, but one garden 

 and orchard, and dairy and poultry-yard and butchers' shop for the large cities 

 that encircle it — how fortunate for the landed interest of all that peninsula would 

 be a steady, undeviating, not party but national policy that should force, by the 

 power of an obvious self-interest, all the manufacturers now employed abroad in. 

 the manufacture of the hundreds of millions of goods imported into Baltimore, 

 Norfolk, Philadelphia and New- York, to come with their capital and machinery 

 and settle down in New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and 

 Maryland ! 



A great variety of articles, fruits and vegetables, would be made, and many 

 of them consumed on the ground, in the production of butter and cheese, and 

 pork, and poultry, and beef and mutton, in lieu of the wheat and other things 

 that are now sent away, and that, being less bulky and perishable, are now 

 made in the Far West, and can be brought into market in competition with them 

 at small cost for transportation. Potatoes and turnips, and cabbages, and carrots, 

 would be sought for or consumed on the spot, to sheep and hogs, and cows and bul- 

 locks.* The manure would be returned, the land enriched, rich swamps would 

 be cleared up, and marshes and meadows drained ; population would concentrate 

 instead of dispersing. The spread of it would be slow and only as the whole- 

 some fruit of actual redundance ; and, above all, schools would multiply, teach- 



to more than 2,500 hogsheads of tobacco ! An able-bodied laborer can dig ten square perches a day — in 

 doing which he lifts 177,500 pounds— for which he geSs an average, perhaps, of 75 cents and finds himself; 

 while the carpenter and brick-layer, with their jack-plane and trowel, get at least $1 50 to $2. Is it any 

 wonder that the current of emigration sets always to the towns? 



* At a late Agricultural Meeting in the Legislative Hall in Boston, Mr. Proctor, of Pan vers, stated that the 

 price of carrots there was $8 a ton, and that 35 tons had been grown to the acre, and that "32 were not un- 

 common"— $256 to the acre ! These carrots are either sold to consumers very near, or probably fed to 

 pigs and cows, and the manure kept on the farm to enrich it, and the pork, and milk, and butter, and 

 cheese sold oif. What would the farmer do with the carrots in Virginia ? How much time, and force,. and 

 expense to get them to market, if any could be found, at a great distance over bad roads? 



Immense factories are driven by steam in Newburyport, Mass. ; why not in Annapolis — in Richmond — 

 in Norfolk— in Alexandria- in Georgetown ? It is a great mistake to suppose that even white labor cannot 

 be found ; it can be found, and cheaper than in New-England. Set the pot of honey, and the boes will 

 Boon corao to it. 

 (914) 



