228 THE SOILS OF CECIL COUNTY 



$40 to $75 per acre. In the more prosperous farming sections the 

 improvements are good and prove the thrift v and industrious char- 

 acter of the farmers, but in the gravel and clay hills of the central 

 part the improvements are poor, consisting of ragged, dilapidated 

 fences, small dwelling houses, and patched-up barns and sheds. In 

 the good farming districts the dwelling houses are comfortable, some 

 of them being quite pretentious, while the barns and other buildings 

 are in keeping with the general character of the country. Neatly 

 trimmed hedge fences form an attractive feature of the farm sur- 

 roundings. Many of these farms are tilled by the owners. This 

 is especially the case in the northern part of the county, but there 

 are also a large number of farms which are in the hands of tenants 

 who are not greatly interested in improving the farms and in bring- 

 ing them to a high state of cultivation. 



A large portion of the county is still forested and uncultivated. 

 While originally the entire county was thickly timbered with various 

 kinds of hard-wood and soft-wood trees, none of the original growth 

 is left standing. In many parts the light timber growth has been 

 removed regularly every few years for making charcoal and also for 

 use in melting the ores which were formerly extensively smelted. 



Wheat, com, timothy and clover are the main crops, and these are 

 grown over the entire county. Truck is grown to some extent, but in 

 the northern central part, growing late crops for canning purposes 

 has for a long time been an important industry. Tomatoes and corn 

 are the principal crops grown for this purpose, and for a long time 

 Cecil and Harford counties have ranked among the prominent tomato- 

 canning districts of the country. Competition with the Middle 

 Western States has somewhat diminished the proportions of this 

 industry, but it still is a large source of revenue to the farmers and 

 to the hands employed during the growing season. The canneries 

 are all small, situated short distances apart, and are run only for a 

 few months in the late summer and the early autumn. If the 

 small, scattered canneries were grouped into larger and better 

 equipped factories, more centrally located, operated from early spring 

 until late fall, and were prepared to can a greater variety of products, 



