: 



higher than the average of soils tliat once gave a 

 return larger tlmn the wheat lands of England, even 

 with "bad husbandry.'' 



Fully to renovate the 8,000,000 acres of partially 

 exhausted lands in the State of New York, will cost 

 at least an average of $12.50 per acre, or an aggre- 

 gate of $100,000,000. It is not an easy task to 

 replace all the bone earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, 

 and organized nitrogen in mold, consumed in a field 

 which has been unwisely cultivated 50 ®r 75 years. 

 Phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere, 

 and liis sub-soil is about the only resource of the 

 husbandman, after his surface-soil has lost most of 

 its phosphates. 



The 300,000 persons that cultivate these 8,000,000 

 acres of impoverished soils, annually produce less by 

 $25 each, than they would if the land had not been 

 injured. The aggregate of this loss to the State and 

 the world is $7,500,000 per annum, or more tlian 7 

 per cent, interest on what it will cost to renovate the 

 deteriorated soils. There is no possible escape from 

 this oppressive tax on labor of $7,500,000, but to 

 improve the land or run off and leave if. That the 

 latter has been done to a large extent, is shown by 

 comparing the population in rural districts at the 

 census of 1830 with that of 1840. In nearly half 

 the towns in the State, population had decreased, 

 notwithstanding the vapid growth of cities and villa- 

 ges, demanding an increase of farm laborers to supply 

 the mere local markets. The canals of New York 

 have operated to hasten the exhaustion of its soils, 

 just as a railroad to California would aid in extract- 

 ing gold dust from its now unwashed sands. While 

 the canals and railroads of New York convey a 

 thousand tons of the few precious atoms in tlie sur- 

 face of the earth, which can alone form bread and 

 meat, to tide water, they do not carry back from tide 

 water one ton of the raw material for m.aking crops 

 of -any kind. A million tons of human food pass 

 down the Mississippi where one ton of tlie elements 

 of such food ascend "the father of waters." 



It will be seen, on referring to the census of 1840, 

 that the five States of Maryland, Virginia, North 

 and South Carolina, and Georgia, employed at that 

 time 1,013,463 persons in agriculture. Of this num- 

 ber, Maryland had 69,851 ; Virginia, 318,771 : North 

 Carolina, 217,095; South Carolina, 198,363; and 

 Georgia, 209,383. 



It is a statistical question of considerable impor- 

 tance, to determine how mucli less these laborers 

 and the mules, horses, and oxen, which they work, 

 annually produce, than they would had no acre of 

 the arable lands in these States, so highly favored 

 by climate and fertility, been damaged in tlie least 

 by improper tillag-e. The difference in the cost of 

 making crops on poor land and on good land, is 

 really much greater than is generally supposed. 

 The shrewd farmers of Massachusetts prefer giving 

 60 cents a bushel for Western corn, to growing this 

 grain on their infertile soil ; while tlie corn-growers 

 of Indiana and Illinois are glad to sell their crops, 

 made on rich land, at 20 cents a bushel. From these 

 facts, is not the inference plain and satisfactory, tliat 

 it costs three times more to produce a bushel of corn 

 on poor than on rich land ? 



"To do full justice to this interesting problem, "By 

 what means, and to what extent, the soils of the five 

 States above named have been injured,'" would fill a 

 volume. A residence of more than two years in the 

 most southern of these States, connected with its 



agricultural press, and devoting much time to the 

 study of soils and their products, will warrant the 

 writer in expressing an opinion on the weight of 

 evidence collected from all sources witliin his reach. 

 The annual loss on the labor of each hand and mule 

 is believed to be $30. This estimate is too high on 

 some plantations, and too low on others. The only 

 reason why so many slaves have been sent South 

 during the last 25 years, (and thousands sent out of 

 Georgia,) is, that the labor of a person is worth t'vice 

 as much to cultivate rich, fresh land, as poor, old land. 



If the estimate of a yearly loss of $30 on each 

 hand, and the domestic animals which he works, be 

 not too high, then the aggregate exceeds tliirly mil- 

 lions of dollars. This is equivalent to having sunk 

 a productive capital invested in farming lands, at a 

 cheap rate, of Jive hmidred millions of dollars, yield- 

 ing 6 per cent, annual interest. While England and 

 France have derived hundreds of millions of profit and 

 revenue from the tobacco and cotton exported from 

 Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland, a 

 large share of all the proceeds received for these 

 staples, which have so desolated the earth over im- 

 mense districts, has left these old impoverished states, 

 with their emigrating citizens, never to return. 



This unwise system of tillage is extending rapidly 

 in the United States. 



Manufacturers, merchants, and mechanics, often 

 shift their settled policy, when they see a profit in 

 making a change. But whoever expects millions of 

 isolated farmers to change suddenly their practices, 

 ideas, and systems of culture and husbandry, shows 

 that he has not labored twenty years to substitute an 

 improving for an exhausting system of field culture. 

 At a fair estimate, there are at this time 2,741,966 

 persons employed in agriculture in the fifteen slave- 

 holding States. Before the study of rural economy 

 as a science will become as popular as the study of 

 politics, law, and medicine, the South will have at 

 work in the field, a force of five millions of operatives. 

 Who does not see that the wise and skillful employ- 

 ment of this vast power of production, is a matter of 

 inestimable consequence to all the phnting States, 

 and to unborn millions who must dig their daily bread 

 from impoverished soils, if the mighty work of land 

 exhaustion is to increase and extend, as population 

 spreads over the QOtton, tobacco, and sugar growing 

 parts of the Union ? Propagated by buds instead of 

 seeds, the sugar cane will be found, like the potato 

 plant, less able to withstand the customary abuses 

 of the earth — the rude violation of the law? of nature 

 — than tobacco, corn, wheat, and cotton plants. But 

 all these are suffering in vital force and constitutional 

 vigor, by reason of their defective food, in partially 

 exhausted soils. Any living being may habitually 

 take a very little poison into its system witliout de- 

 stroying life. Pursue the piactice of poisoning the 

 blood of animals or the juices of plants, only to a very 

 small degree, and it will tell in the course of a few 

 generations, in strange, newf and incomprehensible 

 maladies. An instructive and useful book might be 

 written on the diseases of cultivated [dants ; to say 

 nothing of tliose of domestic animals. Mildew, mold 

 in cheese, rust on wheat and cotton, and fungi, 

 believed by naturalists and botanists to be so injuri- 

 ous to potatoes, are all, in a good degree, like other 

 vegetable creations, subject to tlie control of human 

 industry and science. 



If we visit the farmers of the Nortlnvest, we siiall 

 find the popular feeling developing itself after this 



