74 



HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL PERIODICALS 



1841, and published until early in 1906, when it 

 was absorbed by the Boston Cultivator. 



Fifth is the Prairie Farmer, founded at Chicago, 

 October, 1840, by the Union Agricultural Society, 

 as the Union Agriculturist. The words "and 

 Western Prairie Farmer " were added to the title 

 three months later, the present abbreviated style 

 dating from 1843. It was originally a monthly of 

 eight large quarto pages, and the subscription 

 price was a dollar, which was only expected to 



teen-page monthly in 1845, and in 1862, when 

 paper had grown scarce in Dixie, a bi-monthly. 

 The price was advanced to three dollars per annum 

 in January, 1864, to five dollars in May, and to ten 

 dollars in November in Confederate money, how- 

 ever. The place of publication was changed to 

 Athens at the opening of the year 1865, and in 

 1880 to Atlanta, where it is still published, semi- 

 monthly for a number of years. It has absorbed 

 at various periods the Georgia Grange, the South- 



DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE AND ALL ITS VARIOUS KINDRED ARTS AND SCIENCES 



Honor waits, o'er all the earth, The art that calls her harvests forth. BRYANT. 



VOL.1. 



SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1848. 



'NO. I. 



S. W. COLE, EDITOR. 



QUINCY HALL, BOSTON. 



J. NOURSE, PUBLISHER. 



CONGRATULATORY. 



We recently offered a valedictory, in another 

 Journal, and we are now happy in greeting the agri- 



of the earth must undergo a most rigid scrutiny and 

 the severe ordeal of exact comparison ; implements 

 and machines, the astonishing product of the greatest 

 skill, science, and practice, must bo imrovcd__or 



Fig. 35. Facsimile of the first issue of the second New England Farmer. 



cover the actual cost of production. " We hope in 

 time," says an editorial in the second issue, "to 

 make the Union Agriculturist to the West what 

 the Cultivator is to the East." Some difficulty 

 seems to have been experienced in filling the sheet, 

 as the prospectus of the third volume begs earn- 

 estly for contributions, remarking that "a good 

 correspondent is better than several subscribers." 



Sixth of the old papers is the American Agri- 

 culturist, started in New York as a monthly of 

 thirty-two pages, A. B. and R. L. Allen editors, 

 April, 1842. The original subscription price was a 

 dollar, afterward increased to a dollar and fifty 

 cents. The paper had a checkered career until, in 

 1856, it came into the possession of Orange Judd, 

 who greatly improved it in many ways and carried 

 it to a high point of success commercially. Mr. 

 Judd lost control of the property in 1881, and a 

 period of decadence set in, ending in the sale of 

 the paper, seven years later, to the proprietors of 

 the New England Homestead, who removed it to. 

 Springfield, Mass., where it is still issued, and in 

 1894 changed it to a weekly. 



Seventh is the Southern Cultivator, founded at 

 Augusta, Ga., by J. W. and W. S. Jones, March 1, 

 1843, an eight-page bi-weekly. It became a six- 



ern World, the Dixie Farmer and the Southern 

 Farm of Atlanta, the Plantation of Montgomery, 

 the Rural Sun of Nashville, the Southern Fanner's 

 Monthly of Savannah, and the Phoenix Agricultur- 

 ist of Marietta; and has had a career quite un- 

 equaled for picturesque variety of fortune in all 

 the annals of the American agricultural press. 



The eighth old paper, the Indiana Farmer, began 

 life at Indianapolis, October, 1845, a monthly of 

 sixteen pages about the size of those of Harper's 

 Magazine, and was edited for two years by Henry 

 Ward Beecher ("Henry W. Beecher"he wrote it in 

 those days), then pastor of the Second Presbyterian 

 Church of the city named. It became a weekly 

 about 1860. No connection is claimed with an ear- 

 lier journal of the same name, started in 1837. 



Ninth and last of the agricultural journals 

 founded before 1850 that outlived the nineteenth 

 century is Colman's Rural World, established in 

 1848 as the (monthly) Valley Farmer ; edited for 

 more than fifty years by the veteran Norman J. 

 Colman, who was at one time United States Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture ; and for a long part of 

 that period generally regarded as the great agri- 

 cultural authority for the Mississippi valley and 

 the vast region beyond. 



