172 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



English farmers, that they supposed that a tenant- 

 farmer cultivated better than an owner. We were 

 struck with this fact, when travelling thi-ough 

 Lincolnshhe with some very shrewd farmers. 

 "There," they would say, "is a farm owned by the 

 occupant ; if he paid rent he could not afford to 

 raise such poor crops." 



CAPITAL NECESSARY. 



The secret of this matter seems to be this. To 

 cultivate land profitably, in an old, long settled 

 country, it must be cultivated well and systemat- 

 ically, and to do this requires capital. A fanner 

 in England, M'ho expends the most of his money 

 to buy a farm, has not enough left to cultivate it 

 liberally. A thousand-acre farm in Lincolnshire 

 requires about $50,000 capital, to enter upon and 

 stock and manage it to the best advantage, as 

 tenant mei'ely. It is not the extent of the farm, 

 but the means and skill to cultivate it in the best 

 manner, that make it profitable. Put upon a Lin- 

 colnshire farm of this extent, a farmer with small 

 capital, and he must ruin the farm and himself. 

 He cannot buy stock, tools and manure, nor em- 

 ploy labor requisite to make it productive. The 

 farmer with small capital had better remain upon 

 a small farm. There are certain obvious advanta- 

 ges in farms of not very small extent. Costly la- 

 bor-performing machines, such as steam-engines 

 for threshing, and the like, could not be owned to 

 advantage by small proprietors, and labor can be 

 better systematized on a large than a small farm. 

 The practical objection to the English system of 

 farming is not so much to its agricultural results, 

 as to its oppression of the laboring classes. The 

 laborer in England is generally poor, ignorant and 

 degraded, compared with any class of laborers 

 which we have in New England, and so long as 

 the present laws of property continue, he must al- 

 ways remain so. English agriculture is profitable 

 to the tenant-farmer, and to the land-owner, be- 

 cause the poor laborer who does the hard work 

 gets no just recompense for his labor. 



THE ISLAND OF JERSEY. 



This little island, although governed by Eng- 

 land, is not subject to the English laws as to inher- 

 itance ; but the old Norman law, by which each 

 child inherits equally the land of the parent, still 

 prevails, by a sort of custom, and has prevailed 

 for nine hundred years. This is the island from 

 which came the famous breed of Jersey cows. 

 The effect of their laM's has been to divide the 

 land into very small holdings, a farm so large as 

 forty acres scarcely being found on the island, and 

 most of the farms containing only from five to fif- 

 teen acres. This island, thus divided, is cultivat- 

 ed like a garden. It is rented at an average of 

 twenty to twenty-five dollars per acre annually, 

 and the farmers live in comparative comfort. 



FRANCE. 



Lavei'gne says that in France, cultivation is gen- 

 erally better in those districts where the small 

 properties predominate, and that it is the same in 

 Belgium and Germany, and, indeed, everywhere 

 else, except England. The fact is, that England, 

 though as a nation enormously in debt, yet has 

 immense resources. She is not an agricultural 

 nation, but a manufacturing and commercial na- 

 tion, and she takes the wealth realized from other 

 sources, and invests it in her soil, and so develops 

 its resources. France is more an agricultural na- 

 tion — she cultivates far more acres for an equal 

 quantity of grain, she keeps far less stock on the 

 same number of acres, and produces far less of 

 green crops in proportion to her grain. Her error 

 is like ours. She occupies too much land for the 

 capital she employs. Tliis may be excusable in 

 Americans at the West, on land which costs noth- 

 ing, but it is ruinous on old and valuable lands. 



France has expended her treasures, for a half 

 century or more, in revolutions at home, Avhile 

 England has had peace within her own borders. 

 Like a farmer in a long law-suit, France comes 

 out poor ; and finds the land has suffered from 

 neglect, while its title was in controversy. She 

 is now living as she can, till she recovers her- 

 self, and can invest labor and capital in the culture 

 of her soil. She is an illustration, with her fine 

 soil and climate, and low agricultural state, of the 

 saying of Montesquieu, "It is not fertility, but lib- 

 erty, which cultivates a country." 



Our conclusion is, then, that a well-cultivated 

 farm is most profitable, whether it be large or 

 small, and that the productiveness of land does 

 not necessarily depend much upon its being owned 

 or occupied in large tracts. It is capable of math- 

 ematical demonstration, that with our prices of la- 

 bor and of products, the EngHsh system of farm- 

 ing, with their rents of land, could not support it- 

 self, in this country. The cheapness of our land 

 ought, however, to nearly or quite compensate for 

 the higher price of our labor. Certainly, the high 

 price of labor is no reason for our employing it 

 foolishly, and it is an additional reason why we 

 should employ animal and steam power, and im- 

 proved implements, and those ought to compen- 

 sate for the lower cash price of our products. The 

 great hindrances to our agriculture are want of 

 capital and want of permanent occupation, or the 

 spirit of unrest which unsettles all our plans. 



Farming is still the best business in the coun- 

 try, taking the average throughout, and certainly 

 it is the business which admits of most improve- 

 ment. 



Value the friendship of him who stands by you 

 in the storm ; swarms of insects Mill surround you 

 in the sunsliine. 



