182 



&I)C jTctrmcr's illont!]lij bisiior. 



which the country has necessarily passed. 1 In the fall of 1838, on our way to the State of 

 have no means of determining the truth of this Michigan, we were furnished Iiy Mr. Tucker with 

 assertion, but it must have some foundation, and 



I think it would he difficult for either ot us to 

 add to the Bomber. 



" It is also asserted, liy reliable authority, from 

 records kept during periods of twenty to forty- 

 years, that, ot every hundred persons who com- 

 mence business in Boston, ninety-five at least, 

 die poor; that, of the same number in New 

 York, not two ultimately acquire wealth, after 

 passing through the intermediate process of 

 bankruptcy, while in Philadelphia the proportion 

 is still smaller. 



"B/ the statistics of bankruptcy, as collected 

 under the uniform bankrupt law of 1841 — 

 The number of applicants for relief under that 



law were 33.789 



The number of creditors returned 1.049,603 



The amount of debts stated 440,934,015 



The valuation of property surren- 

 dered 43,697,307 



" If this valuation were correct, nearly ten cents 

 would have been paid on every dollar due; but 

 what was the fact ? 



" In the southern district of New York one cent 

 was paid, on an average, for each dollar due ; in 

 the northern district, 125 cents, being by far the 

 largest dividend. In Connecticut the average 

 dividend was somewhat over half a cent on 

 each dollar. 



lit Mississippi it was 6 cents to S1000 



In Maine i " 100 



In Michigan and Iowa i " 100 



In Massachusetts 4 " 100 



In New Jersey I " 100 



In Tennessee 4i " 



In Maryland 1 dollar to 100 



In Kentucky 8 " 1000 



In Illinois 1 " 1,500 



In Pennsylvania, East Virginia, 



South Alabama, Washington, nothing. 



"After making every possible allowance for the 

 enhancement of this enormous amount of debt 

 by inflation of values, speculative prices, &c, 

 the proportion of the $400,000,000 lost by these 

 of the 1,049,603 creditors who were engaged in 

 proper and legitimate business, must still have 

 been immense, and may justly be charged 

 against the profits of our regular commerce." 



Sl)e Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., DECEMBER 31, 1849. 



The highest valued agricultural periodical of 

 the country—the Albany Cultivator. 



In the promotion of the true spirit by catering 

 for a correct taste in agricultural improvement, 

 no man in the country deserves more than Lu- 

 ther Tucker, of Albany, N. Y, the editor and 

 proprietor of the Cultivator. With this gentle- 

 man we have had a long personal acquaintance: 

 it is now more than twenty-five years since, in 

 the humbler capacity of a journeyman printer, 

 he assisted in the composition and arrangement 

 of our first edition of Teller's History, which, 

 with a succinct history of the United States 

 hastily prepared by our own pen and other im- 

 provements, were secured to us by copy-right, 

 and which from that day to this has supplied, in 

 the multiplication of many thousand copies, the 

 demand for institutions in till the States of the 

 Union. Mr. Tucker left us then, and the next 

 we hear of him is as the successful editor of a 

 newspaper which he established and carried on 

 at great hazard as the first daily in the then 

 youthful city of Rochester in New York. Mr. 

 Tucker, at this place commenced the first stable 

 agricultural journal of the State of New York, 

 which has Ions been known as the "Genesee 

 Farmer :" to this paper, before he established the 

 Cultivator afterwards at his place of residence 

 the late Judge Buel was an early contributor 



a series of his Monthly Cenesee Farmer, which 

 we perused with great delight all the way on 

 our journey, returning by Upper Canada, down 

 Ontario and the St. Lawrence via Montreal and 

 Quebec. It was the beauty and utility of Mr. 

 Tucker's Genesee Farmer that first suggested to 

 us the idea of our own Monthly Visitor, which 

 begun in the last year of our career as a public 

 man in the office of governor of the State, and 

 which, under so much disadvantage from ill 

 health and vexations of business enough to 

 break down a well man, has been continued for 

 the term of eleven years. It was not in our 

 power to do and perform as much as our friend 

 Tucker; but persevering according to the best 

 of our strength and ability we have, as we be- 

 lieve, not without some valuable effect contribu- 

 ted our mite in a cause which lies especially at 

 the foundation of our country's prosperity. 



The career of the present proprietor of the 

 Albany Cultivator has been much more splendid 

 and beneficial. After the sudden death of the 

 lamented Buel, who had made his journal a 

 work of great attraction to every reading farmer 

 of taste in the country, Mr. Tucker, in connec- 

 tion with a son of the deceased, united the Gen- 

 esee Farmer to the Cultivator, and removed him- 

 self to Albany. So valuable did he consider 

 this establishment that at the end of the first 

 year he purchased and paid the younger Buel 

 the sum of ten thousand dollars for his owner- 

 ship of one half of the establishment, assuming 

 all its responsibilities : this sum of itself, was 

 what almost any young farmer of the country 

 would consider a fortune ; for we who can ex- 

 pect to gain by hard labor anil in small amounts, 

 count our hundreds as of more substantial 

 worth than those who merely handle property in 

 traffic and speculation do their thousands and 

 tens of thousands. Mr. Tucker has pursued his 

 favorite idea of the best agricultural and horti- 

 cultural illustrations with a personal industry 

 that has known no stint. Himself a practical 

 printer, with his own hands are the pages of his 

 Cultivator arranged for the press each and every 

 month: the work is made up (to use a technical 

 phrase) by himself before it passes into the 

 hands of the power press printers. It is punted 

 by Mr. Van Bethuysen, one of the most enter- 

 prising printers of the country, with great neat- 

 ness and accuracy. The additional expense of 

 taking and preserving stereotype plates of the 

 numbers has been incurred: among the 

 drawbacks which our friend litis encountered 

 was that of the burning down his establishment 

 with the great collection of stereotype plates 

 and hack numbers of the Cultivator about two 

 years since. Whole acres of the best business 

 part of Albany have in that time felt and expe- 

 rienced a similar calamity. Mr. Tucker must 

 have had fast friends as well as good courage, 

 enabling him still to pursue his business with 

 the wonted enterprise and spirit. In addition to 

 his own labors he pays a handsome salary to an 

 able assistant editor, whose well known valued 

 experience is discovered in the appearance of 

 each succeeding number of the Cultivator. Mr. 

 Tucker has even broken down his health in the 

 personal service which he has devoted by day 

 anil by night to his interesting monthly sheet, 

 which has contained more valuable information 

 to the mass of mankind in the Western world 

 thau any other work at the same price which the 

 press has ever furnished. The price of the Cul- 



tivator is only a dollar a year: we have often ob- 

 tained from a single page of this paper what 

 was of more value to us than the price of a 

 year's subscription. Our latest personal visits at 

 Albany have left us the melancholy reflection 

 that our friend is passing sooner into the " sere 

 and yellow leaf" than would a man who more 

 consulted his ease in the way of good living : 

 the intense labors of the head, the exposure to 

 the severe day and night work of the delicate 

 physical organ which is the window of the in- 

 tellect, have produced a partial paralysis of the 

 face which three years ago imparted to us the 

 fear that his useful work on earth might ere this' 

 day have been finished. 



We have been led into this notice by the 

 beautiful manner in which Mr. Tucker has open- 

 ed the new year in the publication of his Culti- 

 vator. As an advance to his volume for 1850 he 

 has given in a sheet containing thirty-two large 

 pages corresponding with those of the regular 

 numbers, " The Pictorial Cultivator," containing 

 in well illustrated and beautifully executed en- 

 gravings, pictorial representations of almost eve- 

 ry thing the gentleman or lady farmer, the sons 

 and daughters of farmers who are not too proud 

 to consider their fathers and mothers as unfash- 

 ionable workers if not of a race below that of 

 professions calling themselves genteel, would be 

 proud to place as an adornment of the centre 

 table. Rather more useful must we consider 

 Mr. Tucker's Pictorial Cultivator than the month- 

 ly engravings, the display of a fine foot, of a 

 tuckered neck, a waist located in the place 

 where there is a great waste of cloth to fix it 

 where the natural waist is not — the catch-penny' 

 fanciful works ministering more to a voluptuous, 

 if not a vitiated appetite than to any truly benefi- 

 cent or useful purpose, which are hut too much 

 the attraction if not the passion of the fashiona- 

 ble reading world of the present time. This 

 number of the Pictorial Cultivator, which has 

 been gratuitously added to the subscribers of the. 

 Cultivator for the new year, must have cost the 

 proprietor in the expense of engraving alone 

 several hundred dollars. We hope for ibis ser-* 

 vice he may receive ample remuneration : added 

 to this we present the wish, long as we live, to 

 read the Cultivator in a series of succeeding 

 numbers not less interesting than those which 

 have preceded it. It is the book of the farm ; 

 and there is no mistake. 



Maine : Agriculture upon the Kennebeck. 



Among the papers from which we are able to 

 furnish the best extracts is the Maine Farmer, 

 whose editor has proved himself true as steel in ., 

 the cause which we most lay at heart as the 

 ground-work of all the improvements contribu- 

 ting to the wealth and prosperity of the country." 

 The Farmer was first published in the fine town 

 of Winthrop — and there is no finer agricultural 

 section in the interior than Kennebeck county in 

 Maine — the place of residence of its editor,-, 

 Doct. Holmes. The paper is now removed to 

 Augusta, and as a weekly family paper of news, 

 outstrips in circulation in that State any other" 

 political paper of the capital. A most excellent 

 and interesting paper in its agricultural articles, 

 although of a sectarian character much liberal- 

 ized, is that of the Rev. William A. Drew, a man- 

 who has shown, mr.inly the work of his own 

 bands, in succeeding years upon a single 

 acre probably than any other man a greater* 

 production of all the varieties of vegetables, 

 grains and fruits usual upon the farm. — 



