AiND (.TAKi)J^i\il.K'S JUUKINAL,. 



1 gUer, ill Englanil, while oil tbc iim^t^ of raising 

 „ are nutcU bigber tbcrc — sa ibnl, oWbe whole, 

 ,"rin labor ought to be ns lucrative in reunsylvania as 

 ^ nglan.l. 



1) " With regard to wages, it iriny sound strangely, 



jt !t I believe it to be true, that the real interest of nil 



nncrs is, that wages should be high, and for this rea- 



n. A laboring man is not a mere machine — a hu- 



i an poor-box, intj whose mouth is put a daily num- 



'■•i r of cents never to re-appear, but a living being 



t( ith wants and desires, which he will not fail to grat- 



« • the monunt he possesses the means. It he can 



4 rn only a scanty pittance, just enough to keep him 



ij; ive, he starves on accordingly — his food, bread and 



ij alcr, a hall-fed, half-dad, wholly nntuuglit animal, 



.» ith a useless miiutbful of carnivorous teeth. But it 



3 wages increase, he instantly employs them in com- 



rts; in ciDlhcs for himself and family; and as be rises 



the scale, ventures on the taste ot meat, lie em- 



H iiys a tailor — a shoemaker — a batter — a butcher — 



li these in turn, purchase the materials ot their 



ide from the farmer himself. The laborer becomes 



us a customer of hims; If, and the buyer of other 



mfstomers — and the farmer receives back, with nbun- 



;ut interest, the dilforeiice which bo advances in the 



i St instance between high wages and low wages. It 



for this reason that one of our shrewdest farmers 



■jied to say, yes, give our laborers good wages, and 



y will buy our beef. Thus, too, the bounties of 



p -ovidencc go around, abenelicient circle — and, after 



aking the laborer belter fed, better clad, bettei 



iglit — in short a better man, the farmer himself is 



7her for the very bcnclits he dispenses. Depend up- 



is 1 it, there is no surer sign of national prosperity 



ui an high wages — and God grant that for many a 



H ng year it may be the lot of our countrymen who 



ii bsist by the labor of their hands, to work well — to 



paid well — and to live well. 



"And now we eome to the reason whyour crops do 

 t equal those of England. It is, that our farms are 

 nil too large — too large for the means we employ in 

 rming them. Agriculture is the only pursuit 1 

 low, where the owner does not employ his capital 

 bis business He rents or buys a large farm, and 

 en has nothing left to stock it with. He might as 

 ell rent a large store without goods enough to till a 

 _le corner of it. In England, it is supposed ne- 

 ssary, before renting land, that the tenant should 

 ve a working capital, of thirty or forty dollars on 

 re, to employ. It is calculated that, besides lime 

 d other enriching substances, the cost of ihe mere 

 linial manures opplied to the soil of England, 

 unts to three hundred millions of dollors,- being 

 e than the value of the whole of its foreign com- 

 ilerce. Vet the grateful soil yields hack with interest 

 1 that is thus lavished upon it. And so it would do 

 re, if we would only trust the earth with any por- 

 m of our eapitol. But this we rarely do. Afarni- 

 who has made any money spends it not in bis busi- 

 :ss, but in some oiher occupation. He buys more 

 nd when he ought to buy more manure; or he puts 

 It his mojiey in some joint stock company, to convert 

 nshine into moonshine; or else he buys shares in 

 me gold mine or lead mine. Rely upon it, our rich- 

 t mine is the barn-yard, and that whatever tempto- 

 jns stocks or shares may o0er, the best investment 

 I a farmer is lice stock and ploughshares. 



"Another thing which %vc should strive to amend, is 

 e unfarmorlike andclovenly appearance of our fields. 

 lean cultivation is like personal neatness to an indi- 

 dual, a great ottraction to a farm; but who can see 

 ithout mortification, our fields of Indian corn and 

 itatocs, just as they are verging to maturity, ouitop- 

 3d and stifled by a rival crop of weeds which seem 

 aiting with impatience for the removal of the real 

 ■ops, when they and all their seed may take exelu- 

 ve possession of the ground. The rule of farming 

 lonld be, never to let any thing grow in our field 

 'hieb we did not put there; and the value as well ns 

 le beauty of the crop would more than pay the ex- 

 onse of removing these noxious intruders. 



"Nor do we pay sufiicient attention to our gardens. 

 Veare too often content with a small enclosure where 



few pens and beans and a little salad are left to strug- 

 le with a gigantic family of weeds, not to speak of 

 ie frequent inroads from the pigs; and what can be 

 aved conies at Inst on our table the scanty eompnn- 

 Dus of the mnsses of animal iood which form almost 

 ur exclusive subsistence. For such a wilderness, 

 lOw easy would it be to substitute the cheap and 

 vbolesome luxury of many vegetables which would 

 ;row without the least trouble, nnd, while they gave 

 ety to our tables, would diminish our exceeeive 

 jid expansive nse ofnnimal food. 



The same want of neatness pervades the exterior of 

 our dwellings. Wo look in vain for the trim grnss- 

 pl 't, the nice border, the roses, the climbing vines, 

 nnd all the luxuriance of our native wild llowers. 

 These cheap and easy works — which seem trilKs — 

 make up a gieat mass of enjoyments: they arc the in- 

 nocent occupation of the young members of the family 

 — the elegBiit luxury of them all; and they impress 

 even a passing stranger with a sense of the tusle and 

 ease of tbc farmer. 



" In fruits, too, we arc deficient. Our climate in- 

 vites us to plant; nnd there is scarcely a single fruit 

 which will not grow in the open air, and nil of them 

 prosper with n little •belter. Undoubtedly there are 

 insects wbicu infest them; but these, care will exter- 

 minate. Undoubtedly some species are short-lived; 

 but it is easy to provide a succession — nnd even many 

 productions which we used to think uncongenial to 

 our climate, will succeed if we only try them. For 

 instance, 1 am satisfied, from, my own experience, 

 that every farmer may have his patch of grapes quite 

 as readily as be can his patch of beans or peas. He 

 has only to plnnt his cuttings, as he woidd Indian 

 corn, at sufficient distances to work them with the 

 hoe-harrnw. 'I'hey will live through the winter 

 without any covering and with less labor than Indian 

 corn, because the corn rccpiires planting every year, 

 while the vines will last for a century. He will thus 

 prtivido a healthy pleasant fruit for hi? family use, or 

 a profitable article for the market. 



• « H » # «'• • 



I have spoken of farms nnd of farming, let me add a 

 few words about the farmer. The time was when it 

 was the Inshion to speak of the Pennsylvnnin farmer 

 ns a dull, plodding person, whose proper 'representa- 

 tive was the Conestogn horse by his side; indilfercnt 

 til the education of his children, anxious only about his 

 large barn, and when the least cultivated part of the 

 farm was the parlor. These earricatures, always ex- 

 aggerated, have passed away, and the Pensylvania 

 farmer talies his rank among the most intelligent o( 

 his countrymen, with no indisposition for improve- 

 ments beyond the natural caution with which all new- 

 things should be considered before they are adopted. 

 But 1 1 unwillingness to try what ie new, forms no 

 part of the American character. How can it be. 

 since our whole government is a novelty ; our whole 

 system of laws is undergoing constant changes — and 

 we are dnily encountering, in all the walks of life, 

 things which startle the more setded habits of the old 

 world. When such novelties are first presented, the 

 European looks back to see what the past would think 



of it the American looks forward to find how it will 



affect the future — the European thinks ol bis grandfa- 

 thers the American of his grandchildren. There 



wns once n prejudice against nil these things — against 

 what was called theory and book farming — but that 

 absurdity has passed away. In all other occupations, 

 men desire to know how others are getting on in the 

 same pursuits elsewhere, they inform themselves oi 

 what is passing in the world, and are on the alert to 

 discover and adopt the improvements. The farmers 

 have few of these advantages; they do not meet daily 

 nt exchanges to concentrate all the news of commerce; 

 they have no factories, where all that is doing omong 

 their competitors abroad is discussed; no agents to re- 

 port the slightest movements which may afiect their 

 interests. They live apart — they rarely come toge- 

 ther, and have no concert of action. Now, this de- 

 fect can best be supplied by reading works devoted to 

 their interests, because these moy fill up the leisure 

 honrs which might otherwise be wasted in idleness or 

 misemployed in dissipation; nnd as some sort of news- 

 paper is almost a necessnry of life, let us select one, 

 which, discarding the eternal violence of party politics, 

 shall give us all that is useful or new in our profes- 

 sion. " This society has endeavored to promote such a 

 one in the Farmer's Cabinet, a monthly paper, ex- 

 clusively occupied with the pursuits of agriculture — 

 where we mny learn whnt is doing in our line over all 

 the world, and nt so cheap a rnte, thnt lor a dozen 

 stalks of corn, or a bushel of wheat or potatoes, we 

 may have a constant source of pleasing and useful in- 

 formation. 



" I think, however, tbnt we must prepare ourselves 

 for some startling novelties in farming. We were 

 taught in our youth to consider fire and water as the 

 deadliest foes. They are at last reconciled, and their 

 union bos produced the master-work of the world. 

 Steam has altered the whole routine of human labor 



it has given to England nlone, the equivalent in In- 



hor of four hundred millions of men. As yet, com- 

 merce and manufactures alone have felt its influence, 

 but it cannot be that this gigantic power will long be 

 «nt»nt to be shut up in factories and ships. Rely 



upon it, steam will ere long run oil' the track into tlio 

 fields, for of all human employnicnls, farmwork is nt 

 this moment the most dependent on mere manual la- 

 bor. Be not, therefoie, surprised if we yet live to seo 

 some steam plough making its hundred furrows in our 

 fields — or some huge engine, like the extinct mnm- 

 moth, roving thnuigh the wettern liucsls, nnd mow- 

 ng down the woods, like a cradler in the barveet-lield. 

 Wild as this Bcems, there is nothing in it stranger 

 than what we have all witnessed already. When Ful- 

 ton and Oliver Evans first talked to us about the steam- 

 boat and the rail-road, we thought them insane, nnd 

 already we enjoy more than they ever anticipated in 

 their most sanguine moments. One of these npplica- 

 tions of stenm — the raising of water for agriculture— 

 I bnve already attempted in my own small way. You 

 know that the greatest enemy of our fanning is the 

 drought of mid-summer, when all vegetation withers, 

 nnd the decaying crops reproach us with sull'ering the 

 magnificent rivers by their side to pass awny. In the 

 soutbern elimntes of the old world, men collect with 

 grcnt toil the smnllest rills, nnd mnke them wind over 

 their fields — the hand-bucket of Egypt, the wnter- 

 wheel of Persin, all the toilsome contrivance of man- 

 1 labor, are put in requisition to carry freshness nnd 

 fertility over fields not wnnting them more than our 

 1. With far greater advantages absolutely nothing 

 has yet been done in that branch of cultivation; may 

 we not hope thnt these feeble means of irrigation may 

 be superseded by steam, when a few bushels of coal 

 may disperse over our fields, from our exhauatlcss ii» 

 vers, abundant supplies of water. 



All these improvements which mny adorn or ben- 

 efit our I'arms, are recommended to us not only by our 

 own individual interests, but by the higher sentiment 

 of our duty to the country. This is essentially a na- 

 tion of farmers. No where else is so large a portion 

 of the community engaged in farming; no where else 

 are the cultivators of the earth more independent or so 

 powerful. One would think that in Europe the great 

 business of life wns to put each other to death; for so 

 large a proportion of men are drawn from the walks 

 of productive industry and trained to no other occu- 

 pation except to shoot foreigners idtcays, and their own 

 countrymen occasionallij; while here, the whole eii- 

 y of nil the nntion is dtrectcd with intense force up- 

 ___ peneeful Inbor. A strange spectacle this, of one, 

 and one only, unnrmed nation on the face of the earth I 

 There is abroad a wild struggle between existing au- 

 thorities and popular pretensions, and our own exam- 

 ple is the common theme of applause or denunciation. 

 It is the more important then for the farmers of this 

 country to be true to their own principles. The soil 

 is theirs — the government is theirs — and on them de- 

 pends mainly the continuance of their system. Tl nt 

 system is, that enlightened opinion, nnd the domestic 

 ties, are more stable guarantees of social tranquility 

 than mere force, nnd that the government of the plough 

 is safer, and when there is need, stronger than the go- 

 vernment of the sword. If the existing dissensions of 

 the old world arc to be settled by two millions of sol- 

 diers, all ours will soon be decided by two millions of 

 voters. The instinct of agriculture is for peace — for 

 the empire of reason, not of violence — of votes not of 

 bayonets. Nor shall we, ns freemen and members of 

 a domestic and fireside profession, hesitate in our 

 choice of the three master influences which now rule 

 the world — force, opinion, nnd alTection — the mrU 

 rul<^e-box, the ballot-box, nnd the band-box." 



Post Office. 



There are more than 21,000 Post Offices in the U. 

 States. By the law of the land, the annual compen- 

 sation is not to exceed $-.;000. Inonly thirty-nine of- 

 fices does the regidar commission or per centage al- 

 lowed to a Postmaster amount to thnt sum. Of these, 

 seven only are in the New England States; six in 

 New York; four in Pennsylvania; two in Majyland; 

 two in District of Columbia; three in Virginia; three 

 in Georfin* two in Alabama; three in Ohio; and one 

 in each°of the States of North Carolina, Louisiana, 

 Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana and Mis- 

 souri In eio-hty Post Ofiiccs, the compensation ran- 

 ges from $1000 to $1200. A very large number of 

 Postmasters receive a compensation ranging from 

 $500 to S'lOOl^- 



I<cnEi'=K OF PopuLATioK.— According to the otn. 

 cial returns in the the bands of the U. S. IViarshals, 

 ffivin'' the population of the whole State ot New 

 Yorkr it appears that, in 1830, the State coutained 

 1,918,608— in 1840 it contains 2,429,470 souls. In- 

 crease in ten years, 510,868. 



" The rust of tho mind (idleness) is th« Kight of 

 genius."— ScHcw. 



