110 



THE genesp:e farmer. 



of the quantity of milk consumed By awarding 

 premiums on this principle, youwill soon learn the 

 exact relations that subsist between a ton of green 

 grass eaten by a first rate milker and the required 

 product in milk and butter. Few know how much 

 good pork or beef ] 00 pounds of corn ought to pro- 

 duce. Before it is possible to put things together in 

 the most skillful and profitable way, we must investi- 

 gate the exact Halations of these things to each other. 

 In a word, farm economy is at once a collection of 

 experimental arts and experimental sciences, which 

 can only be advanced by wisely conducted and truth- 

 fully reported experiments. 



It was an early appreciation of the truth of this 

 view of agriculture that prompted me thirty years 

 ago to advocate the establishment of experimental 

 farms to develop new and useful facts in tillage and 

 husbandry. 



American fai-mers throw away about a third part 

 of their labor and capital by the misapplication of 

 both, taking the whole country as a mass. As the 

 improvements now in progress by a comparatively 

 few come to be more generally understood, the truth 

 of this remark will not be questioned. Taken to- 

 gether, the improved lands of Pennsylvania are not 

 naturally so well adapted to wheat-culture as those of 

 New York ; and while New York has fifty per cent. 

 more laud under improvement than Pennsylvania, the 

 latter State grows more wheat than is raised in 

 New York. At the last census Pennsylvania re- 

 turned more bushels of wheat than any other .State ; 

 and fourteen times more than all New ICngland. 

 Pennsylvania farmers use more lime by fifty per cent, 

 than is used in New York and New England put to- 

 gether; and even little Delaware is in advance of the 

 Empire State in that regard. Wherever nature has 

 given us a fair supply of the elements of wheat in 

 our soils in New York, we raise generous harvests ; 

 but unlike the farmci-s of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

 Delaware and Maryland, we burn little lime for agri- 

 cultural purposes, and purchase Httle guano. It is 

 generally thought that it is wiser to sell a poor farm 

 to a neighbor that he may have a larger one, than to 

 purchase lime and manure to render it productive. 

 Hence, New York has fui-nished tens of thousands 

 of emigrating farmers to the new States at the West. 

 The depopulation of many rural districts is a remarka- 

 ble feature in American husbandry. Not one of the 

 old thirteen States has escaped the natural effects of 

 our exhausting colonial system of farming and plant- 

 ing. I could name hundreds of to'wns that now con- 

 tain fewer inhabitants than they did twenty years 

 ago; and if any body doubted the fact that four-fifths 

 of the laud under cultivation in this country suffers 

 constant deterioration, nothing could be easier than 

 to prove the correctness of the statement by statistics 

 and other trustworthy evidence. 



Refoi-m is the one thing needful in American Agri- 

 culture ; but a majority of the people are against it. 

 Not one farmer in twenty in the United States takes 

 an agricultural paper of any kind. Hence, a whole 

 lifetime is exhausted before pubUc opinion becomes 

 sufficiently enlightened even to consider this sul)ject. 

 We cultivate the soil, but we do not cultivate the 

 science of improving it. On millions of acres of our 

 meadows and pastures, moss is gradually taking the 



place of the best gi-asses ; while no earnest and general 

 effort is made to discover and apply a sovereign 

 remedy. Our fields are clover-sick, uur orchards fail, . 

 and our domestic animals diminish in numbers, without 

 so much as exciting a moment's serious attention. All 

 our agricultural talk is superficial, and makes no last- 

 ing imjjression on the public mind. To a few, agri- 

 cultural improvement is a pleasant hobl>y, mIio are 

 innocent of any close study of the true principles of 

 rural economy founded on the laws of nature. These 

 principles are as enduring as man on this planet, as 

 imjiortant as his necessities arising from hunger and 

 nakedness, and as universal as the blest sunshine of 

 heaven. 



It is an unfortunate misnomer to call any system 

 of farming an improvement that fails to make full 

 and perfect restitution to the land for the elements of 

 crops removed, so far as air and water do not supply 

 them. Restitution to the soil is the first and highest 

 duty of every cultivator, and of all others who eat 

 of its fruits. Not until the inhabitants of cities are 

 far more civilized and humanized than they are now, 

 will they begin to ajjpreciate their duty to the land 

 that yields them food and raiment. Until they wisely 

 co-operate with the cultivators of the soil in giving 

 back to it all fecal matters and other fertilizers ex- 

 tracted therefrom, the deterioration of cultivated land 

 will be unavoidable over the whole repul)lic. An in- 

 telligent "writer in the London Farmers Magazine, 

 for October, estimates the annual waste of manure by 

 the people of Great Bi'itain at fifty million pounds 

 steriing, or $250,000,000; while they need to import 

 this year 18,000,000 quarters of grain, or 141,000,000 

 bushels. As England grows no tobacco, cotton or 

 maize, and has a climate by no means so severe on 

 tilled laud as ours, it would be easy to prove, did 

 time permit, that we waste vastly more of the ele- 

 ments of crops in a year than is wasted in Great 

 Britain. But so long as the people who speak the 

 English language refuse to consider this Food and 

 Raiment cjuestion, it would seem to be an idle em- 

 ployment to press it upon their attention. Time will 

 do what no man can accomjilish in advance of the 

 ri2:)cness of human folly. 



THE COTTON GIN. 



In the year 1793, the genius of Eli WmrxEY did 

 for the planters of the South, what Akkwright, 

 CROMrioN and Watt had already done for the manu- 

 facturers of England. He invented a machine by 

 which the seeds and impurities were separated from 

 the cotton with the utmost facility, and thus gave to 

 American planters the practical monopoly of cotton- 

 growing. There is nothing to be compared with the 

 increase in its cultivation subsequent to WniTXEv's 

 invention, except the corresponding extension of its 

 manufacture in England. The absolute dependence 

 of the cotton trade upon this single cause is shown 

 by the fact that the States which in 1785 exported 

 five bags, and in 1793 three hundred and seven bags, 

 were able in 1894, the year when the Cotton Gin 

 came intd general use, to produce a crop of seventeen 

 thousand \ seven hundred and seventy-seven }>ales, of 

 v.hich oveV three thousand bales were exported. In 



