FUTURE AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 59 



been vastly improved. Twenty-two years ago the great chan- 

 nels of trade in agricultural products were coastwise, or along 

 our navigable streams. Of the vessels that were then daily 

 taking their cargoes in the harbors of Charleston, New Orleans, 

 Mobile and Savannah, it is safe to say that the principal portion 

 of these freights was derived from the cotton, sugar, rice and 

 tobacco, as well as other agricultural staples of the surrounding 

 territory. The same was the case with the commerce of the 

 Mississippi ; and we find the numerous steamships and flatboats 

 which plied upon that river in those days were laden with the 

 agricultural products of the States that border its banks, or 

 that are sent down through the interior by the Ohio. The 

 commerce of the lakes was maintained, moreover, in a great 

 measure by the transportation of the agricultural produce of 

 the great States of Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, lying on their 

 borders, to their Eastern markets. From the interior, the trans- 

 portation to these great channels of water communication was 

 slow, tedious and expensive. The grain crops of central Illinois 

 and many parts of Ohio and Michigan were of necessity con- 

 verted into beef and pork, and driven, as it were, to market, 

 in order to avoid the cost of transportation by carriage, which 

 almost destroyed their original value. 



Now how changed ! Every State, every county, every town, 

 almost every farm, has its railroad communication. "We have, 

 as has been said, " rendered the railway a domestic institution, 

 so that the steam-car visits nearly every hamlet and every con- 

 siderable town. The music of its whistle no longer frightens 

 the farmer's horse, nor does the proximity of the thundering 

 locomotive, raging and sighing under its weighty burden, and 

 with the pressure of its fiery spirit, disturb the equanimity of 

 the anxious matron, careful for the safety of her child." Every 

 hill pasture, the crops of every valley, are brought within a few 

 hours of market. The cattle which to-day grazed upon the rich 

 pastures of the West, before the set of to-morrow's sun are far 

 on their way to feed the teeming population of New York and 

 the Eastern cities. The transit of a thousand miles to-day is 

 attended with less labor and annoyance than the farmer of half 

 a century ago underwent in carrying his grain to market over 

 fifty miles of rough and muddy road. 



