HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL PERIODICALS 



77 



VOL I, 



ROCHESTKK, JANUARY 1, 1831. 



Nl'MBEU 1. 



TUB GENE SEE FARMER 



AND GARDENER'S JOURNAL. 



DoTotiJ to Af'icu'.tur*, Horticulture, Domettic Econo- 

 my, Its. lie. 



Tbe first number of a paper under the above 

 title wni published at Rochester, on Saturday, 

 Jan. 1, 1331 conducted by a gentleman long 

 experienced in the icience of Agriculture, Hor- 

 ticul(ure,and other useful arta.taeistod by rasny 

 of the btsit practical farmers in this section of 



six months, or $2,00, if paid at. the time of 

 subscribing. 



frUCKER & STEVENS. 

 Rocheater, Jan. 1, 1831. 



Kdi(ori who will (ire the obovo (wo or iWe ioser- 

 tiou, will confer favor u hic.b will be reciprocated the 

 6m oppiuo uy. 



Nt'MBKR ONE. 



We arc aware that HUB ueaaon of the year ie 

 rathtr an unfavorable time to connnsnce a work 



same year a sloop of forty tons wai.built and 

 launched on the Gencsee, Lake." 



Qftere? Where was the" Ontario Gazette" 

 printed, and where is the Genenee Lake?" 



That portion of country ''.nee called the "Ge- 

 nesoe Country," although iUfxacl boundaries 

 were' rather vague ana uncertain,, prubiblv , 

 noiv contains enme two hundred towns, with < 

 moro than 206,000 inhabitants, with cities and 

 village* at everv four curnrrs, and newspaper's 

 as thick as blackberries. The Gflnqsee Cuun- 



Fig. 38. A reduced reproduction of part of the first page of the first issue of the Genesee Farmer. 



The Nebraska Farmer was started by Robert 

 W. Furnas, at Brownville, in 1859, but failed to 

 receive sufficient support and was after a time 

 discontinued, to be revived in 1875, at Lincoln, 

 by J. C. McBride and J. T. Clarkson. It was moved 

 to Omaha in 1898, but taken back to Lincoln 

 seven years later, and is still prosperously pub- 

 lished there. 



The Kansas Farmer was established at Topeka 

 by the State Agricultural Society, in 1863, at first 

 a monthly, afterward a weekly, and it shortly 

 became private property. Its career has been 

 highly useful and highly uneventful. 



The Farmers' Home Journal was started at Lex- 

 ington, Ky., by James J. Miller, in 1865, and ten 

 years later was moved to its present home at 

 Louisville. It has always been a weekly, the first 

 form being a sixteen-page folio. The original sub- 

 scription price, three dollars, has been reduced 

 to one-third of that sum. Several small agricul- 

 tural papers have been absorbed at various times, 

 the Journal having always prospered steadily, do- 

 ing better every year regularly than the year 

 before which is something that can be said of 

 very few periodicals of any class. 



Next came the present Michigan Farmer, dating 

 from May 15, 1867, a few months after an older 

 paper of the same name had been taken to Chi- 

 cago and rechristened the Western Rural. The 

 existing paper was founded by R. F. Johnstone 

 and has always been published at Detroit, though 

 it has been owned since September 25, 1893, by the 

 publishers of the Ohio Farmer. It absorbed the 

 Michigan Fruit-Grower and Practical Farmer in 

 1899, and the Free Press Farm and Live Stock 

 Journal in 1905. With brief and unimportant 

 exceptions, it has always been the only agricul- 

 tural paper in the state. 



The New England Homestead was started at 

 Springfield, Mass., in 1868, and from a small local 

 beginning, gradually came to cover New England. 

 Not only that, but its proprietors finally bought up 

 the decadent American Agriculturist, and also the 

 Orange Judd Farmer, a paper established at Chi- 

 cago by the able editor whose name it bears, after 

 he lost control of his New York monthly. These 

 two journals were taken to Springfield, where they 

 are still issued, though bearing in their head-lines 

 not only the name of that place, but also the names 

 of New York and Chicago. 



The year 1870 is memorable for the birth of the 

 first American agricultural journal printed inde- 

 pendently and only in a foreign tongue, the Acker 

 und Gartenbau Zeitung of Milwaukee. _ (A German 

 edition of the American Agriculturist was issued 

 for several years ; but that is a little different.) 

 The Zeitung was at first issued monthly, then semi- 

 monthly, and since 1893 weekly. The first editor 

 and publisher were Rudolph Koss and W. W. 

 W. Coleman. 



The Pacific Rural Press was started at San 

 Francisco, January 1, 1870, a sixteen-page weekly, 

 four dollars per annum, W. B. Ewer editor, Dewey 

 & Company publishers. E. J. Wickson became edi- 

 tor in December, 1875, and has held the position 

 ever since. The ownership passed in 1892 to Al- 

 fred Holman, in 1898 to J. F. Halloran, and in 1905 

 to T. A. and E. Rickard. While the fire following 

 the earthquake of 1906 was still burning, new 

 offices were opened at Berkeley, and the paper is 

 still published there. 



In the year 1875, when three-quarters of the 

 nineteenth century had passed, there were about 

 seventy agricultural papers of a general character 

 in the country, being a net increase of twenty-six 

 over the roll for 1859. In 1900, there were 140, 

 twice as many as in 1875 ; and the present number 

 is about one hundred and eighty, only seventeen of 

 which, however, date back as far as 1875. The 

 additions of these later years may, for present pur- 

 poses, be summarily dealt with, and this for two 

 reasons. In the first place, these newer journals 

 are still too new to be safely assigned to their 

 proper places in the perspective of history. And 

 secondly, it must be admitted that many of them 

 are so frankly commercial that they can never 

 lay claim to any historical interest, except such as 

 might attach to accounts of big department stores 

 or successful shoe factories. They were started 

 and are operated for the sake of revenue from 

 advertisements, subscription payments being re- 

 garded as a comparatively unimportant incidental. 

 By this it is by no means intended to be implied 

 that they differ much in character from the pres- 

 ent status of their older congeners ; no agricul- 

 tural paper could live in these days without adver- 

 tisements, and there are probably very few peri- 

 odicals of any class that do not actually lose money 

 on their subscription departments ; only the fifty- 

 year-old farm journals have a professional, and 



