164 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[Novenber 



About half a pound of grain daily, and your 

 best pasturage for a few days, and they will 

 take the ram readily. Sheep intended for 

 winter-fattening should be well fed now. 

 Don't attempt to winter-fatten Meriuoes 

 until they have had three years' growth. 

 Keep the lambs in a separate flock. Use car- 

 boHc soap as a wash for ticks. Shelter the 

 lambs— and indeed all sheep— well in severs 

 weather. Be on the alert for dogs that kill 

 sheep. 



Feed the poultry well. Don't let tliem get 

 the habit of roosting on trees or utensils. The 

 greater the number of eggs produced by a 

 fowl, the less vitality there will be in each ; 

 therefore, the lirst only of a laying should be 

 set. Karly chickens are the most certain to 

 live, because force is stored up in the parent, 

 before laying commences, sufficient to endow 

 the first eggs or chickens with plenty of vigor. 

 The chickens being hatched and assigned 

 quarters, see that animal food is artificially 

 provided for them, for they cannot thrive 

 upon grain and vegetables alone. 



CONTRIBUTIONS. 



For The Lancaster Faemee. 

 BALANCE OF TRADE. 

 Mr. Editor: — I have been considerably in- 

 terested in the discus.'sion that has been going 

 on for some time in Tjie Farjier on "The 

 Balance of Trade." The articles over the 

 signature "J. P." seem to me so unreason- 

 able in argument and so false in statistics 

 that I would like to make some reply. The 

 idea that a nation, any more than an in- 

 dividual, can grow rich by buying and con- 

 suming more than it produces and sells would 

 seem only to need statement to meet with 

 ridicule. I suppose it to be axiomatic that all 

 production is gain and all consumption is 

 loss ; and as our imports are for consumption, 

 and are actually consumed in our country, 

 they measure our consumption over our pro- 

 duction, and our exports measure our produc- 

 tion over our consumption, and therefore the 

 excess of imports (consumption) over exports 

 (production) must necessarily be loss, and 

 lice rersa. It is very plain when we apply it 

 to a farmer or manufacturer : what he pro- 

 duces and sells in the market are his exports ; 

 what he Iniys and consumes are his imports. 

 If the former exceed tlie latter, he gains ; if 

 the latter the former, he loses. It cannot be 

 different with a nation. If we import only 

 necessary articles, of course the more we get 

 lor a given amount of exports the better ; for, 

 being necessary, we have to have them, and 

 the cheaper we get them the better. But we 

 import and consume hundreds of millions of 

 dollars worth of luxuries every year, that, 

 so far as increasing the material wealth 

 of our country is concerned, amount to 

 nothing whatever. Take the single article of 

 wine. We import and consume about $12,- 

 000,000 worth of foreign wines, champagnes, 

 etc. annually. Would any one but J. P. say 

 that this $12,000,000 worth of liquor that is 

 used almost entirely as a beverage, enriches 

 our nation as much as though we had brought 

 back, for our exports bills of exchange or gold 

 coin, that would stand as solid, reserved 

 ■wealth in our country, to be used in time of 

 need, and not vanish, leaving us poorer than 



before, as the liquor does. Gold coin being 

 transmitted to pay the balance of trade, and 

 not to be counted as imports or exports in 

 this argument. Necessaries we must have; 

 or fail in our production, and of course it is 

 best to get them where they can be obtained 

 the cheapest; but J. P. 's argument rests on 

 the fallacy tliat all imports that have the 

 same money value are of equal worth, to the 

 nation that consumes them. No one would 

 think of applying this reasoning to an indi- 

 vidual, and say that a farmer who sells 

 (exports) his wheat crop for $100 and brings 

 back (imports) its value in whisky, and 

 drinks up, or rather down, would be just as 

 well off at the end of the year when the liquor 

 is all gone as though he had invested the $100 

 in State or Government bonds. 



Take the case that .J. P. supposes, of a 

 miller exporting $.50 worth of dour, and im- 

 porting for it salt worth here .$75. Salt being 

 a necessary article, the country may have 

 gained as the miller did ; but suppose he had 

 imported the same value in rum and drank it, 

 how would the country have been benefited, 

 and how would it have helped the matter if he 

 had sold it to his neighbor for consumption. 

 J. P. seems to think that if the importer 

 makes a profit, our country is that much richer. 

 As well say that all the lottery dealers, stock- 

 jobbers and gamblers, who grow rich by fllcli- 

 ing from the pockets of others, are adding 

 wealth to the country. The supposition 

 about the salt being lost at sea and hence not 

 being set down at the custom house as im- 

 ports is only trifling, as it is the purchase of 

 the imports, and not their actual passage over 

 the water, of which we complain. We might 

 as well suppose the salt spilled or destroyed in 

 the street on its way from the ship to the 

 warehouse after it had passed the books of 

 the collector's oHice. Then the imports would 

 exceed the exports, and according to J. P. 

 there should be a gain, but neither the im- 

 porter nor the country could be easily con- 

 vinced of it. Or suppose the salt should prove 

 worthless and would bring nothing in the 

 market; here again the imports would ex- 

 ceed the exports, for is is the cost of the 

 merchandise abroad that is put down at 

 the custom house as the value of our imports, 

 as it sliould be, and not what they may sell 

 for here. Where would be the gain in this 

 case y Or, how much richer would our coun- 

 try become by consuming .seventy-five dollars 

 worth of good rum than thirty sacks of worth- 

 less salt. If our prosperity is to be measured 

 by the excess of imports over exports, all we 

 have to do to get rich is to trade our goods 

 abroad for merchandise at enormous prices ; 

 for, the higher the price ,we pay the more 

 would our imports exceed our exports. If 

 this theory is correct, why is it that all our 

 stocks and securities go up in the market 

 when our exports are in excess of our imports 

 and gold is coming into the country, and go 

 down when it is going out, to pay the balance 

 of trade againsr ns ¥ 



But it is J. P.'s statistics that I wish 

 more particularly to correct, his arguments 

 not being very dangerous. One would suppose 

 that a theory so false could hardly have many 

 facts to support it ; but quite a row of figures 

 is presented. Without pretending to follow 

 him through "England, Denmark, Austria 



and Hungary," the prosperity or adversity of 

 which countries few of us know much about, 

 let us see how near he comes to the truth iu 

 our own country, at a time that most of us 

 can remember to our sorrow. I mean the 

 period through our late civil war and the ex- 

 travagance of our nation for nearly a decade 

 after its close ; namely, from 1861 to 1873. 

 J. P. is compelled to acknowledge this to be 

 a period of great depression and loss, and to 

 make his theory hold good he has the exports 

 during these years of great and extravagant 

 consumption and comparatively small pro- 

 duction, exceeding the imports by nearly a 

 billion of dollars. I was astounded on seeing 

 these figures, for if they were correct all my 

 ideas of political economy must be given up. 

 We all know our nation was a losing one 

 from 1801 to 1873, through that terriljly de- 

 structive and unijroductive period of our civil 

 war, and the extravagantly consumptive 

 period since, till our financial panic in 1873 

 compelled us to stop in our ruining course. If 

 our exports during this time were exceeding 

 our imports, wliy, black was white, and white 

 black, and all the old rules about industry 

 and econemy hading to wealth, were false. 



I got the American Almanac, compiled by 

 Mr. Spofford, the Congressional librarian, 

 who is the very best autliority on these sub- 

 jects. It puts the imports in excess of the ex- 

 ports in every year of these 12 except 1862, 

 and the excess of imports in the whole 12 

 years was $1,196,103,171. Not satisfied with 

 this, I wrote to Joseph Nimmo, Jr., Chief of 

 Bureau of Statistics at Washington, and got 

 his reports from 18G1 to 1879. His figures 

 agree almost precisely with Mr. Spofford's, 

 making our imports exceed our exports from 

 1861 to 1873 by over a billion of dollars. It 

 thus appears that J. P.'s statistics are exact- 

 ly reversed. He had the right figures but got 

 them on precisely the wrong sides of the ac- 

 count. 



After our extravagantly inflated balloon 

 burst iu ; 873, and let us down so hard that 

 some of our bones are aching yet, and we 

 were taught by severe adversity, that we must 

 go to work and practice economy, our exports 

 began to exceed our imports, and from 1874: to 

 1879,ourexports,according to the authority just 

 quoted, exceeded our imports by .$657,206,961, 

 or about 130 million dollars annually. Does 

 any one pretend to say we were not gaining 

 during these latter years ? or, that we could 

 have resumed specie payments, as we did in 

 1879, if our imports had exceeded our exports, 

 as they had done, during the previous de- 

 structive decade ¥ According to .J. P. our 

 country must have been losing at a terrible 

 rate from 1871 to 1879, when our exports 

 were exceeding our imports 130 millions annu- 

 ally, and gold was pouring into our country. 

 John Sherman didn't think so. — S. P., Lin- 

 coln, Del, Oct. 23, 1882. 



Selections. 



TREES, CLIMATE AND SOIL. 



Relation of Forests to Rainfall. 

 Sir : The idea has long prevailed that the 

 removal of forests is accompanied with a di- 

 minished rainfall. As a matter of course the 

 converse of this would be held as widely and 

 with equal confidence. Such, no doubt, is 



