The Lancaster Farmer. 



Dr. S. S. RATHVON, Editor. 



LANCASTER, PA., MAY, 1879. 



Vol. XI. No. 5. 



Editorial. 



PRESERVING THE PROCEEDINGS. 



" President Tobiu.s called Vice President 

 Geyer to the chair, and made some remarks 

 on preserving the documents of the society. 

 The Lancasteu Farjieu is not patronized 

 as it should be. lie thought that if arrange- 

 ments cciuUI be ni;ulc to have the proceedings 

 published iu this journal, thus having them in 

 book form, it woukl be to the advantage of 

 the members and of Tiih Farmer, which 

 would obtain a large number of additional 

 subscribers." 



The above we clip from the proceedings of 

 of the April meeting of the Lancaster County 

 Poultiy Society ; and, without regard to what 

 the members may think they ought to do in 

 regard to The Lancaster Farmer, we 

 desire to say that we have published all the 

 proceedings of the FouUry Society in our 

 columns — both preliminary and subsequent — 

 and we intend to continue doing so, whatever 

 may be the result. We also, for the same 

 reason, publish the proceedings of the Agri- 

 cultural and Horticultural Society, the To- 

 bacco-Growers' Association, the Bee-Keepers' 

 Society, the Linntean Society, and the pro- 

 ceedings of our county farmers' clubs as often 

 as we can get them. These proceedings con- 

 stitute a personal and practical epitome of 

 the thoughts and doings of the agriculturists 

 and collateral workers of the county ; and as 

 the volume in which they are published can 

 be preserved in convenient book form, proper- 

 ly indexed, it can be referred to by those of 

 the present generation as well as the genera- 

 tions to come. Therein can be found not only 

 th§ names of the active participants in our 

 local agriculture and kindred interests, but 

 also what they, from time to time, thought, 

 said and did. AsJ an instance— the proceed- 

 ings of the Agricultural and Horticultural 

 Society have been published iu The Farmer 

 for over ten years, and perhaps nowhere else 

 is there now existing a more convenient refer- 

 ence to them, and every year enhances their 

 value. Of course, if a substantial appreciation 

 of these things were to follow, it would much 

 encourage the arduous labors of both Editor 

 and Publisher. 



"NON-RECOGNITION OF AGRICUL- 

 TURE BY GOVERNMENT." 



"A striking commentary on the position 

 of agriculture is, that although this pursuit is 

 acknowledged to be of such great commercial 

 and industrial importance to the country, yet, 

 when its claims are contrasted with those of 

 the natural sciences, it receives scarcely gov- 

 ernmental recognition. We have expensive 

 governmental surveys, and vast collections of 

 birds, plants, rocks and minerals, and large, 

 frequent and extremely valuable reports, pub- 

 lished at great expense, written in the lan- 

 guage of science for scientists, and this is as 

 it should be. Yet, although the lands wan- 

 dered over by our expeditions are desirable 

 for agriculture, or have close relations with 

 the extension of the population of those lands, 

 no educated agriculturist is attached to the 

 exploring staff, and the agricultural possi- 

 bilities of those immense areas are unexplored. 

 We have had exploring expeditions, and the 

 explorers have been naval officers simply, or 

 men of science have been attached ; and when 

 ■we examine the records as published, we look 

 in vain for either a comprehensive or detailed 

 account of conditions or circumstances appli- 

 cable to our agriculture. We have boundary 

 surveys, with abundant reference to scenery, 

 to the trials of the explorers, to the wild 

 vegetation, but few words given to the agri- 



cultural po.ssibilities, and those few so auper- 

 licial as to be nearly valueless. 



Our Government measures and triangulates 

 mountain areas, and the great reports are 

 fdled with valuable geological detail ; but the 

 rivers are not surveyed in their relations to 

 irrigation, and the characters of the soil and 

 the climate with reference to the needs of 

 agriculture receive but a scant attention. 

 Why cannot agricultural science receive recog- 

 nition, and why not attach an educated agri- 

 cultural observer and thinker to all our gov- 

 ernmental science exploration parties ? Such 

 a course would be wise, just and proper. We 

 commend this subject to our brethren of the 

 agricultural press for their consideration." 



The foregoing, from the editorial columns 

 of the Scientific Furmtr for April, 1879, will, 

 no doubt, find an extensive endorsement, for 

 it seems to be an expression of the sentiments 

 of a large number of the most intelligent agri- 

 culturists of the country, and the persistent 

 and continued non-recognition of that class, 

 and the interests it represents, seems to us 

 not only ungrateful, but also socially and 

 financially suicidal, if it is not the most in- 

 excusable presumption. 



We do not think the government has done 

 or is doing one whit too much for science ; 

 nor do we intimate that the editor of the 

 Scientific Farmer thinks so or says so ; but we 

 think that from the very organization of the 

 Government down to the present day, it has 

 made less provision for and has exercised less 

 energy in the agricultural interests of the 

 country than it has in the interests of any 

 other governmental department. Even its 

 own agricultural department has never had 

 sufticient government patronage to make it 

 efficient and generally respected, hence it is 

 always passing through a scrutinizing and 

 often an unjust censorship. Its inefficiency, 

 if any really exists, may not be due to the in- 

 competency of its official incumbents so much 

 as it is to the niggardly support it has received 

 from the National Congress. 



Our "Great Constitutional Expounder," in 

 his recognition of agriculture as the most im- 

 portant factor in the social, civil and physical 

 progress of mankind, has given expression to 

 the sentiment that " f/i« farmer is the founder 

 of civilization," and it seems to us that it does 

 not require much observation and reflection 

 to perceive that this, properly understood, is, 

 in an eminent degree, the very truth. 



Of course, it is not to be inferred that the 

 farmer himself , as a man, through his superior 

 intelligence, morality, energy and enterprise, 

 is the founder of our civilization ; but that he 

 represents a vocation and an interest that 

 constitute tiie sure foundation upon which 

 the civil and domestic superstructure of 

 society can alone be most successfully reared. 

 We can hardly conceive of a nation destitute 

 of agriculture, without associating them with 

 " uncivilized savages." Ancient Venice may 

 have attained a high state of civilization 

 without an agriculture of her own, but she 

 would have been anaked starveling without the 

 sustaining agricultural productions of other 

 peoples. It is true there are many industrial 

 interests not immediately connected with 

 agriculture, which may have the appearance 

 of thrift, but without agriculture there would 

 be little or no demand for their productions. 

 Man cannot live and prosper on the results of 

 fishing and hunting alone any more than he 

 can "by bread alone," and, whatever his call- 

 ing may be, the highest civilizing influences 

 of his physical and domestic condition are 

 those which arc due to agriculture. Agricul- 

 ture ramifies throughout the entire length and 

 breadth of our vast country, and there is not 

 a nook or corner iu the whole land where, by 

 the manipulation of the soil, two blades of 



grass are made to grow instead of one that 

 does not exhibit it.s benign influences. 



And yet this almost universal interest — this 

 sine qua non to human civilization— receives 

 less governmental encouragement than any 

 other of the great interests of the country. 

 The government grants immense land subsi- 

 dies — amounting to millions of dollars — to 

 soulless corporations, endowing them with the 

 power to dictate to agriculturists just where 

 they may locate, and tlie tenure by which 

 they may possess their homes, without re- 

 flecting that if it was not for the results of 

 agriculture there might be precious little use 

 for their railroads at all. Our national Agri- 

 cultural Bureau may not be what it ought to 

 be— not what its originators intended it should 

 be — nor yet what its oflicials desire it to be ; 

 but there is little wonder of this since gov- 

 ernment permits it to fall, and then literally 

 kicks it for falling by withholding the .sus- 

 taining means of support. During two years 

 of political excitement it had not the means 

 to issue its annual reports, whilst thousands 

 of dollars have been granted to bogus com- 

 mittees of nivestigation, and to pay for 

 voluminous reports thereon that never will be 

 read perhaps; whilst the agricultural elements 

 of om- country are daily compelled— amongst 

 other things too numerous to mention— to 

 drag out a feeble existence unsupported and 

 alone. 



Economy in the administration of the func- 

 tions of an oflice is, no doubt, very desirable, 

 and, perhaps, necessary to its success ; but 

 true economy is quite a difierent thing from 

 " penny wisdom and pound foolishness," and 

 it seems to us that much of this kind of 

 economy has always characterized the general 

 government in its relations to the agricultural 

 interests of the country. The Department of 

 Agriculture, as before intimated, may not 

 have been managed with the efficiency that 

 has been expected by the government or the 

 people, but no one seems to reflect that the 

 department may not have received the en- 

 couragement and pecuniary support that were 

 necessary to develop its efficiency. During the 

 years 1S73 and 1874 it had not even the means 

 to publish its usual annual report, inferior as 

 those reports were, as compared with other 

 departmental documents of the government ; 

 but in our view this inferiority was mainly 

 due to the inferiority of the material used in 

 its mechanical composition. It must also be 

 remembered that the department had, and 

 still has, to depend mainly on the voluntary 

 and unpaid contributions of local amateur 

 observers, who giving their service gratis, 

 could only devote those fragments of time to 

 the service in which they had nothing else to 

 do. In the Entomological Department Mr. 

 Glover worked like a slave to develop prac- 

 tically the histories of noxious insects ; but his 

 rep. rts— tinctured with the mechanical in- 

 feriority of the department — never compared 

 with those issued by the several States re- 

 porting upon that subject. This was not his 

 fault, but his misfortune iu exercising an 

 official function without the pecuniary means 

 to bring his work in a proper manner before 

 the country. 



Sandwiched as those reports always have been 

 among the general papers — statistical, meteo- 

 rological, 'agricultural and otherwise that 

 make up the reports of the department— they 

 never elicited the special attention they would 

 have elicited had they been published in a 

 separate volume, on good paper, in clean type, 

 and embellished with accurate and life-like 

 illustrations. 



Congress and the country are at this time 



sorely exercised about the rinderi)est, that is 



I spreading far and wide, and threatens to be- 



I come a devasting plague ; but any legis- 



