HIRED LABORERS. 
213 
of, discretion. Light is beginning to break in upon us 
in the East, indeed, it is pretty full daylight with 
them,; and it cannot be doubted we shall have ere 
long, a bright and glorious sunshine over all our Union. 
It may be a matter of interest to know the peculiar 
breeds of sheep raised in the “ Colonies.” The report 
before us is evidently made up by a commercial man 
rather than a breeder, and we are consequently with¬ 
out information on this point, except what is inci¬ 
dentally afforded. There seems to have been almost 
every variety transplanted thither, from the silken 
fleeced Saxon, to the Alpaca covered Lincolnshire. 
Hence we see in the first public sale of 1817, quota¬ 
tions varying from lOd. to 10s. per pound, or from 20 
cts. to over $2.30 ; the latter, however, was consider¬ 
ed at the time, a fancy price. There were many 
Saxon and Merinos, well selected and freely bred; 
also, many of the long wools of England. Much 
fault is occasionally found with the “ low Lincoln¬ 
shire,” and very high, commendation is given to the 
choice “ combing wools.” We suspect an advanta¬ 
geous cross has been produced between the fine wool 
and the long, giving fineness, elasticity, and length, 
to the staple, and thereby eminently adapting it to the 
most profitable fabrics, bombazines, mousselin de 
laines, &c. This is. a cross frequently made by Long 
Island and Hudson river farmers, without reference 
to the fleece, but solely for the advantage of large and 
early matured, and consequently profitable lambs, for 
the New York market. It is from such flocks, some 
of our shrewd manufacturers selected the long stapled 
fleeces for which they paid some 28 cts. in ’43, and 
resold them to their brother artisans at the handsome 
turn of 48 cents per lb. 
It were much to be desired, that a breed, combining 
the last mentioned qualities, could be originated with 
permanent and reliable points. Lord Western’s fa¬ 
mous experiment, to harmonize and perpetuate the 
valuable ibut opposing qualities of the Merino and 
Long wools, is said to have proved a failure, as was 
to have been expected, from the violence of the 
cross. Another Bake well may, perhaps, in a great 
degree, accomplish this desideratum; or a union of 
the skill of several individuals, may possibly effect, 
what is in the power of a great genius alone to 
achieve. As the experiment need be attended with 
no loss, and may serve to excite in observing minds 
an interest in the result of various combinations, we 
trust American breeders may, hereafter, give some 
attention to this feature of this highly important sub¬ 
ject. R. L. Allen. 
Buffalo, Feb. 19, 1845. 
HIRED LABORERS. 
There is.no one thing in which our farmers in the 
free States are so frequently imposed upon, as in the 
laborers employed on their farms 1 speak now 
more particularly of those farmers who don’t labor 
with their hired men themselves. The following 
sketch is a fair sample of many others which have 
come under the notice of the writer, and yet these 
would-be farmers wonder why they don’t make mo¬ 
ney by farming as well as others. Mr. B. has pur¬ 
chased a farm capable of keeping 100 head of cattle, 
100 sheep, 2 broo i mans, 1 pair of team horses,and 
2 pair of working oxen, one pair 6 and the other 7 
years old. These he calculates to work moderately 
every fair day until they are 8 years old, when he 
turns off the oldest yoke, and puts on another yoke 
at 6 years old, and so keeps on a regular routine, 
supplying them from steers of his own raising. He 
stables and grooms them the year round, and their 
growth docs much towards paying for their keep. 
They are in high condition after having done the 
spring work. At 8 years old they are then turned 
to grass during the summer and autumn, then fed 
with cut hay, or straw, with corn ground in the cob, 
until the following March, when they are si a ugh • 
tered, and barrelled for family use, supplying his la¬ 
borers who have families, &c. His other team is a 
pair of strong farm horses, slow but sure. These 
he keeps in good condition, well groomed, and never 
thinks of letting them stand idle a day, any sooner 
than he would hire a man to stand idle, except it be 
stormy weather, in which case he never takes them 
out, but has them groomed and fed the same as when 
they are worked. Now from this farm he calculates 
to get every necessary that a farm will produce in 
the meridian of New York, for the consumption of 
the farm, and the supply of his family in the city i 
and although not on as large a scale as many boast 
of, it is sufficiently large to employ a good many 
men, and one principal business is to send milk to 
the city. But I am wandering from the subject on 
which I started. 
The-man at the head is one of all work,—scarcely 
anything in the farming department that he does not 
fully understand—industrious and faithful in every¬ 
thing; but not so with all the others put under him. 
Where the work is regular, he can get along very 
well; but on a farm like the one in question, there 
must necessarily be much that is complicated, and 
often a man has to be called from one thing to ano¬ 
ther, in which case an opportunity is given, if dis¬ 
posed, to play “ old soldier,”—as it is sometimes 
called—and he will take advantage, and use every 
kind of duplicity to get rid of his duty, not only 
wasting his own time, but by trifling immoral con¬ 
versation take away the attention of others from their 
respective duties; his influence being deleterious 
wherever it is exerted, and all such creatures have 
more or less influence among every gang of hands. 
The owner of the farm having hired this man in the 
city, from his own good recommendation of himself, 
the overseer feels a delicacy in preferring complaints 
against him, and he is suffered to go on for weeks, 
and perhaps months, doing more injury than a sheep 
diseased with scab or rot turned in with a flock of 
healthy ones. It is impossible to know the ultimate 
loss resulting from employing men who have no 
fixed principles of right by which they are governed 
in the discharge of their respective duties, and I have 
often thought that a farmer did a public injury, as 
well as himself injustice, by employing and giving 
countenance to such as 1 have described. 
More than thirty years ago, I was spending an 
evening with Isaac Hicks, perhaps one of the clever¬ 
est merchants in the English acceptation of the term, 
that ever did business in the city of New York. He 
made a fortune in a few years, and then retired, and 
spent the remainder of his life as a farmer on Long 
Island. He was a man of great conversational pow¬ 
ers, and, in all my intercourse with him, 1 never 
heard him utter a sentence but was full of meaning 
and good sound sense. He said that he had often 
exchanged sentiments with a gentleman (whose name 
