476 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



lury. Their natural and only resource is to go away West, and turn rival pro- 

 ducers of your staples, because they are your only staples — Corn and Wheat — that 

 may be made with little force and transported cheaply in kind, or on the hoof, to 

 market. Thus you see your Government policy — your public legislation — tends 

 to scatter population and make all producers, leaving you no dependence but aa 

 overstocked and ruinous market at home, or a more precarious and ruinous one 

 abroad. 



Patrons of this journal ! are we traveling out of our latitude in discussing 

 questions like this, which lie at the very foundation of your condition ? Or shall 

 we forever and forever harp on stale matters of making corn and wheat, and 

 how to plant potatoes, and how spread manures, all of which you know quite as 

 well and a little better than many who undertake to teach you ? Or shall we surfeit 

 you with accounts, a thousand times repeated, of how some monstrous bullock 

 has been fattened at enormous cost into a mass of slush, weighing 4,000 pounds — 

 or a single acre made to produce what others were made to do fifty years ago ? 

 Shall we tVeat you as children, to be amused with humbugs, or as men, ardently 

 seeking new and valuable information ? We confess this last is most to our own 

 liking, and most what we feel we are ourselves in want of. Much more do we 

 and you want to know what will concentrate instead of scattering and driving off 

 your population, and how you can get the nearest and most remunerating mar- 

 ket for such things as will pay well if sold near at home, and that cannot be 

 made in riValry with you— as wheat and corn can, even to the very foot of the 

 Rocky Mountains. Were it necessary to look for high authority to justify us in 

 pressing such topics on the attention of the agricultural community, in an agri- 

 cultural journal like this, and to plead the example and the doctrines of a trav- 

 eler of sagacious and profound observation — and withal a Southerner and friend 

 of Free Trade, where Free Trade is practicable — we might quote the remarks 

 of Hon. J. R. Poinsett, addressed to — whom do you suppose ? Not to politicians 

 and legislators, but to the Agricultural Society of the State of South Carolina 

 — a body as enlightened as the same number of cultivators, or of any class, to 

 be found in any State or country on earth, except lately, since the kindred sci- 

 ences have been applied to Practical Agriculture in England and Scotland. Hear 

 what Mr. Poinsett says of the effect of the presence of Manufacturers on the 

 Agriculture of a country : 



" Both from observation and reflection, I am convinced that a State entirely destitute of 

 Maiiufactui-es, whatever may be the extent and nature of its staple productions, will always 

 be inferior to one that combines manui'actural industry with agricultural wealth. In the first 

 place, materials to a very large amount, which might be worked up to advantage, but which 

 will not bear the cost of distant transportation, are wasted for want of neighboring manufac- 

 tures. In the next, it is destitute of those towns and villages that grow up around such es- 

 tabhshments, affording home markets for the produce of the farmer, more advantageous than 

 those at a distance, and supplying him with necessary articles at a cheaper rate, the price 

 being diminished to the amomit ol' the cost of transportation. Again, manufactures greatly 

 increase the productive resources of a country ; the use of steam and water power, and the 

 vast number of mechanical contrivances and labor-saving machines set in motion by them, 

 augment to an almost indefinite extent the ]iroductive industry of the country ; while every 

 discovery in science applicable to the useful arts which manufactures give rise to, adds still 

 farther to its wealth. It is tnie that the application of Science to Agriculture has increased 

 its products, and that we have some lew labor-saving machines, but how few and insignifi- 

 cant are they when compared with those that multiply a thousand-fold the industrial capital o{, 

 a manufactui-ing district ! Where manufactures exist, the individuals interested in their suc- 

 cess and prosperity, from their proximity to each other, easily unite their efforts for all pur- 

 poses of common interest, and good roads and canals result naturally from such combinations, 

 and convenient lines of communication are everywhere established, so as to give to each one 

 his fair share of the advantages of trade. We, on the contrary, live far apart, and meet 

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