148 Tfaxsacttoxs of the American Institute. 



worth $736,586,326 — all this exclusive of the vast amounts of cotton, 

 rice, sugar and tobacco which were raised in the Southern States, and 

 which entered into the calculation of ISiO. And if we examine the 

 .cotton crop of the same periods, we shall find that it had increased 

 from 790,479,275 pounds, in 1840 to 2,000,000,000 pounds, or there- 

 abouts, in 1860, just previous to the breaking out of the war. Guided 

 by these figures, what have Ave a riglit to estimate for the twenty 

 years following ? In the twenty-one States upon whose crops the com- 

 putation of the crops of 1862 has been made, we may estimate the grain 

 crop of 1880 to be worth $1,500,000,000— leaving uncounted the hay 

 crop and the root, fruit and garden crops, which are constantly increas- 

 ing. And I have no doubt the cotton crop will be more than doubled 

 in the hands of the small farmers of the south. The aggregate value 

 of the crops of 1868 is estimated at $1,811,668,915. The corn crop 

 is valued at $569,512,480, the wheat crop at $319,189,710, the hay 

 crop at $351,941,930, and the cotton crop at $225,000,000. While 

 a general survey of our increasing agriculture furnishes us with this 

 encouraging view, we can also derive great satisfaction from tl)e 

 improvements which are going on in the more precise and limited 

 branches of farming. We who live in the nothern section of our 

 country have found that the most careful cultivation is especially 

 necessary and important. The wholesale farming of the west and 

 south does not apply to our harder climate and narrower valleys. 

 There is no section in which the highest skill is so necessar}-, and 

 none in which the farmer is SO' much stimulated to exercise all his 

 best faculties. As I have endeavored to demonstrate, we have 

 .already done much, and we may do still more. And when we look 

 around us and see that the minds of our people are turned with 

 renewed energy to the land, I think we may anticipate an era in 

 which intelligence and capital will be devoted to the work of advanc- 

 ing upon a new career of agricultural enterprise and prosperity, far 

 more satisfactory than anything that has yet been accomplished. The 

 way is now fairl}"^ open for us to step beyond mere tradition, experi- 

 mental, spontaneous agriculture, into a system whose laws are as 

 definite as the mind of man can make them. And with a department 

 of agriculture organized, as I trust it may be ere long, as a branch of 

 the general government, upon a scale equal to the demands of a 

 country like ours; with schools and colleges rising upon every hand ; 

 with an agricultural journalism untiring in its energy and conducted 

 with the best intelligence — the enterprising landowner may expect 



