1850. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



133 



fashion : "Let us construct railroads and canals, 

 improve our navigable rivers and lake harbors, pur- 

 chase the best farm implements, and then employ all 

 our capital and energies in transforming every atom 

 in the soil which will make grain, provisions, and 

 wool, into those marketable commodities, and send 

 them to distant cities and nations for consumption." 

 This agricultural and commercial enterprise is com- 

 placently regarded as the wise development of the 

 agricultural resources, of a new country ! Although 

 the inevitable results of this practice may be seen in 

 each of the old thirteen States, as in the valleys of 

 the Mohawk and Hudson, yet it is confidently be- 

 lieved by sanguine farmers, that the truly rich soils 

 of the West are inexhaustible. 



Whoever will examine this great national question, 

 of taking every thing out of the land and putting back 

 nothing, must be satisfied that no other than the most 

 disastrous consequences can follow. The number of 

 laborers employed in this simple operation, increases 

 at the rate of 200,000 a year, in the United States. 



To repair the damage already done to the soil, will 

 cost over one thousand millions of dollars, 



S. W.'S NOTES FOR THE MONTH. 



The next Seneca Co. Ag. Fair. — The rural vil- 

 lage of Ovid has fairly won the palm from Waterloo 

 and Seneca Palls, by overbidding them something 

 less than !f 100 for the privilege of locating our next 

 Cattle Show there. Well may friend Moore, of the 

 Rural New-Yorker, boast of the number of his Ovid- 

 ian subscribers, as no other hamlet or village rural 

 knows better how to keep up with the spirit and intel- 

 ligence of this progressive age, than this same Ovid. 

 For the benefit of those who have not travelled 

 through this all fertile alluvial county of Seneca, let 

 mc say that this village, which takes its name from 

 the most voluptuous poet of the Augustian age, is 

 situated on the western brow of the dividing ridge 

 v/hich separates the Cayuga and Seneca lakes. From 

 hei-e you look down upon the broadest expanse of the 

 Seneca, four miles distant, as upon a surface of 

 moulten silver : what the perspective lacks in sterile 

 grandeur of mountain precipice, or basaltic rocky 

 clifT, is amply compensated by the richness of the 

 picturesque landscape — green fields now and then, 

 yellowing into harvest ; neat and often ambitious 

 farm-houfes ; capacious, painted barns ; grain stacks 

 and hay stacks ; extensive orchards ; all of which is 

 relieved by very many patches of dark brown woods 

 of very tall deciduous trees ; — filling the mind with 

 the idea of the land's fatness and man's thrift. But, 

 reader, this half shire, romantically perched little 

 village, is not by any means as beautiful as it will 

 be ; as it grew up in a utilitarian age, before Down- 

 ing's day, you will not now see many cottages or 

 bub-rural liouses standing a little back from the street, 

 with French windows looking out upon shrubs and 

 flowers ; but the conviction will force itself upon 

 your mind, that this is the place for them, and that 

 soon here they will be seen. 



The Wealth of our Farmers. — It is a com- 

 mon observation that the farmers are full of money — 

 "no debts to pay, no notes in the bank.'' When you 

 find a bank put to it for notes to pay a check, the 

 Cashier will tell yon that the circulation has been 

 paid out for farmers' products, and that it has not yet 

 left their pockets. But I take it that the pecuniary 

 ease of the farmers ia not to be attributed to the hi^h 



prices they have received for their surplus products, 

 nor to the large amount of that surplus, but only to 

 their superior industry, economy, self-reliance, and 

 the paucity of their wants, growing out of their com- 

 parative expenseless social position. Few farmers 

 seem to be aware of the great pecuniary saving inci- 

 dental to life on a farm ; hydra-headed corporation 

 taxes do not reach them there ; pauperism in its end- 

 less phases, from fixed domiciliated want to varied, 

 daily, ambulating beggary and fraud, is only of the 

 overgrown village or large town. 'Tis true that an 

 occasional subscription paper may sometimes annoy 

 the farmer, and beard him at his home : but they do 

 not haunt him nightly, nor stare him in the face at 

 all liours, and at every corner of the street. And 

 tlien the expense of following the ever changing 

 tyrant Fashion — the daily sacrifice made to the eyes 

 of others — may be well dispensed with on the farm, 

 where prying eyes from without are rarely seen. 

 'Tis true, of late, that many sons and daughters of 

 thrifty farmers do follow the expensive fashions in 

 dress, to a certain extent ; but i-arely beyond their 

 ability to pay by the avails of their own superior 

 industry. There may be among them the votary of 

 fashion ; but never its culpable slave. 



It is said that the revenue of the United States will 

 this year amount to $38,000,000 of dollars. The 

 better part of this great sum is received for duties on 

 imported luxuries and the finer articles of dress. 

 Although two-thirds of the people are farmers, it is 

 not supposed that one-fourth part of this great tax is 

 paid by farmers. Hence, as I said before, farmers 

 are rich only from the moderation and simplicity of 

 their wants, and not from the high prices they receive 

 for the products of their industry. 



California. — There seems to be a great discrep- 

 ancy between the accounts by the private letters from 

 California, and those of the California newspapers. 

 All the California papers hold but one language, 

 which may be summed up in the following lines of 

 Ben Jonson : 



Here, are the golden mines, 

 Great Solomon's Ophyr ! He was sailing to 't 

 Three years ; but we have reach'd it in ten montlis. 

 This is the day wherein, to all my friends* 

 I will pronounce the happy wonl, BE RICH. 



Yet, sad to say, from letters both published and pri- 

 vate, we learn that within a short distance of these 

 very printing offices, in the month of December last, 

 more destitution, sickness, e.xposure, and positive 

 suffering has been witnessed in a day, than can be 

 met with in the United States in a twelvemonth — 

 that "five out of every twelve are sick" — that thou- 

 sands would return to the United States, had they 

 the means to do it. A letter from Micliigan states 

 that money was scarce before ; but since the Cali- 

 fornia fever, it commands 25 per cent., secured on 

 bond and mortgage by the infatuated farmer, who 

 thus puts his fee-simple "upon a cast," to raise money 

 to take him to El Dorado. Another letter, from 

 Wisconsin, computes the amount of money already 

 abstracted from that new State, by California adven- 

 turers, at the incredible amount of !|3,000,000. 



The forty quart Cow. — Mr. H. Smith, of 

 Covert, says that his cow will give forty quarts of 

 milk per day — that "he has weighed one mess, not 

 the largest, which weighed 324 lbs.;" this is only 

 about sixteen quarts. Joseph Wright says he must 

 have some better evidence of a forty quart cow, before 

 he goes to Covert with his $500. S. W. 



