MANIA FOR LARGE FARMS. 5 



taking the average of the whole amount cultivated and of the 

 prices of the crops by the actual results, that the produce of 

 Massachusetts of cultivated land, on an average of the whole 

 amount, is ^28 to the acre ; of Ohio it is $18 to the acre; of 

 Texas $21 to the acre ; and California, which boasts of her 

 richness in agriculture, overtopping even her mines, gives but 

 ^21 to the acre. 



Both farmer and statesman will be led to inquire what is the 

 cause of the languishment of agriculture as a business in tlie 

 United States, because we have seen it more remunerative in 

 New England than anywhere else in proportion to the amount 

 of land under cultivation. True, we hear of the immense crops 

 and immense farms of the West ; but there it is a question of 

 quantity and extent of farms, and not of the value of the crops. 

 It is also true that, for a few years, when the adventurous settler 

 takes the virgin soil, he gets crops far, far surpassing these 

 which I have brought into comparison ; but then, that is but for 

 a few years, and he quits the land which he has cleared and re- 

 duced to cultivation, and which he declares worn out, for " fresh 

 fields and pastures new " ; and for a while (yet a moment in tlie 

 nation's life), this maybe repeated; but the second and the 

 third generation certainly will find a necessity to retill the lands 

 that their fathers have exhausted. There can be no more 

 striking illustration of this than that which has occurred within 

 the memory of men here.. All can remember when the Gene- 

 see Valley in New York supplied not only its own inhabitants, 

 but all New England with the finer brands of flour. The 

 Genesee brand of flour was the only one called for in its day, 

 and we older men can remember the glowing accounts we read 

 of the productiveness of the New York lands in wheat and 

 their richness in breadstuff's. Next we hear of St. Louis flour ; 

 then we read of Minnesota flour. But the fact which most 

 vividly portrays the rapid exhaustion of land in this country is, 

 that wheat from California was brought in ships fifteen thousand 

 miles, in 18G8, around Cape Horn, carried by railroad and 

 canal to the Genesee Valley, and in the Rochester mills ground 

 to supply the wants of its inhabitants, sons of those fathers who 

 supplied all New England, within a generation, with their 

 surplus flour. 



In searching for a remedy for this exhaustion of the soil, to 



