176 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
DO OUR EASTERN FARMERS BETTER 
THEIR CONDITION BY” REMOVING TO 
THE WEST. 
NUMBER TWO.- 
Our remarks in the March number were 
partly historical. To illustrate our subject 
they must be continued, to a limited extent. 
With the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825, 
the facilities of emigration were greatly pro¬ 
moted. Emigrants from East, by the Hud¬ 
son river, had but to proceed to Albany or 
Troy, and then take passage on canal-boats, 
with all their home comforts about them, 
proceed to Buffalo, thence by steamboat to 
any part then accessible on the great Lakes 
beyond. By these means they were enabled 
to carry with them a large proportion of 
their household goods, and surround them¬ 
selves with many more comforts than under 
the old way of removing—in wagons. The 
prairies and oak-opening countries of the 
West, had by this time been reached, where 
the emigrants soon brought the land into cul¬ 
tivation, and within a year or two, raised 
sufficient crops for their family support, 
without the toil-wearing process of cutting 
and clearing the heavy forest lands which 
the early emigrants had encountered. 
Northwestern Ohio and Michigan were now 
opened and accessible—abounding in fine 
prairies and scattering forests, with a fine 
corn and wheat soil, readily brought into 
use ; and over those inviting regions the new 
settlers flocked, and nestled down like 
pigeons. Emigration, in fact, like fish, al¬ 
ways runs in shoals, showing the gregari¬ 
ous disposition in that, as in everythingelse. 
Thus, we have witnessed the tide of movers 
for a given period, all wending in one direc¬ 
tion. After “ New Connecticut,” which was 
the “ Western Reserve” of Ohio, had got 
about one-third or one-half peopled, and fine 
lands were still to be had among “ old” set¬ 
tlements, with schools and churches, and 
quite passable roads, for three to five dollars 
an acre, emigration went far beyond them, 
to the “ Maumee Country,” the “ White 
Pigeon,” “ Prairie Round,” and “ Washte¬ 
naw,” and Saint Joe,” and all the country 
thereabouts in Michigan; Northwestern 
Ohio, and Southern and Central Michigan, 
and Northern Indiana, were rapidly sprinkled 
over with new farms, log cabins, and a busy, 
hopeful, industrious people. 
About 1830, Chicago was discovered, and 
two or three years after, the Indians being 
purchased out by the Government, away 
rushed the increasing tide of emigration into 
that quarter. Even now, Ohio had got too 
narrow for the settlers who, but a few years 
before, had moved into it as the ultims-thule 
of Western progression, and thousands of 
them sold out, and packed up their chattels, 
to find this still better world beyond. The 
land speculating mania now, in 1834-'5-’6, 
had got fairly hold of all the American 
World, and it was at once discovered, that of 
the hundreds of millions of acres at the 
West, there would soon be a scarcity of land, 
and everybody who could command money 
enough to locate a “quarter section” at 
“Government price,” scratched it together, 
and hied away to Western Ohio, Michigan, 
Northern Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, to 
plant it, when, for the next fifteen years, 
they could neither get their money back nor 
occupy their purchases. The “ Saginaw 
Country ” of Michigan, with its vast pine 
forests, and the Fox, and Rock, and Illinois 
River lands of Illinois, had now been discov¬ 
ered, which absorbed untold investments— 
all to prove rapid fortunes to the new adven¬ 
turers. With this speculative mania, bun¬ 
dled along emigration, in shoals of farmers, 
mechanics, merchants, professional men of 
all variety and grade, with high hopes and 
sanguine expectations of fortune, fame and 
happiness. 
It is bootless to tell how sadly the splendid 
fortunes of the capitalists—in prospect, the 
happy anticipations of the emigrants, in all 
their dreams of competence and wealth, had 
vanished in the sudden convulsions of 1837 
to 1842. Ruin, bankruptcy and straightened 
means, according to the depth which the 
spirit of speculation had drawn in its vic¬ 
tims, now pervaded all and every part of the 
vast territory over which it spread ; but the 
indomitable energy and perseverance of the 
sufferers worked them through, “ somehow 
or other,” and by the year 1845. the whole 
country was again “ wholesome,” in its pe¬ 
cuniary affairs, and the tide of Western emi¬ 
gration, moderately but steadily filling up the 
vacant places in the wide, wild territory 
which had previously been appropriated to 
private investment. Men having come 
again into their right senses, wild lands had 
got back into Government prices ; and un¬ 
told thousands of acres were purchased by 
the new emigrants of the speculators, for 
less than had been paid for them ten years 
before, taxes and interest thrown off. From 
1840 to 1850, the great vacuum between Lake 
Erie and the Mississippi, great portions of 
which had been grasped by the speculators, 
now gradually filled up. People had now 
discovered, that in their eagerness to get to 
the “choicest” lands far West, they had 
passed, unobserved, hundreds of miles east 
of where they finally located, better lands, 
now to be got at less prices than they had 
paid beyond; and, although now too late to 
profit by that knowledge themselves, thous¬ 
ands of later emigrants had found it out, and 
stopping short, purchased them at low prices, 
and founded comfortable homes and good 
estates for themselves and their families, 
amid good society, with schools, churches, 
good roads, and better markets ; and it is 
scarcely worth while to say, that the later 
emigrants, with means in their hands, made 
much better investments in purchasing par¬ 
tially improved farms, and contiguous wild 
lands in the previously settled districts, at 
low prices, than those who had gone far be¬ 
yond, and ten years in advance of them. 
Now the railroad spirit had fairly com¬ 
menced its career, dull markets and low 
prices for the vast agricultural supplies of 
the great West, began to feel the new stimu¬ 
lus of cheap and ready transportation to the 
Eastern markets. These avenues, as they 
became rapidly opened, gave anew stimulus 
to agricultural enterprise. Foreign immi¬ 
grants, arriving every year by hundreds of 
thousands, chiefly destined for the West, 
gave a new impetus to native enterprise, and 
away went the world again, on the wings of 
speculation, discovery, improvement; and 
now innumerable lines of railway are built, 
and projected, and in progress all over that 
vast, level Western world, penetrating 
through every State west of New-York and 
Pennsylvania, to the farthest verges of Iowa, 
Minnesota, Missouri—even unto Kansas and 
Nebraska ; t aye, to the copper mines of 
Lake Superior, and the great Red River of 
the North, with all the accompaniments of 
new cities, and opening farms, embracing the 
wildest imaginations of the active popula¬ 
tion of that far-off world, in fortune and hap¬ 
piness. Thus things now are—and every¬ 
thing affecting the substantial prosperity and 
improvement of both people and country, are 
in a marvellous career of progress. 
Yet, all this we have related, is in the ag¬ 
gregate. The great mass of created wealth 
and action has been the result of individual 
enterprise and industry ; and individually it 
must be viewed, to determine the application 
of such example to the personal circumstan¬ 
ces of such as contemplate a change of 
home, personal relation and property, from 
where they now are, to a new settlement and 
home, and have, amid new society, or no 
society at all, in an untried climate, a fresh 
soil, with far distant markets, embracing 
new modes of agriculture, and some new ar¬ 
ticles of production. 
In the mass of people, emigration is im¬ 
pulsive. Thousands set out from their old 
homes, to find new ones in the West, un¬ 
certain where they are to bring up, led off by 
the glowing accounts of some friend or rela¬ 
tive who has gone before them, and seeing 
nothing on their way there but such as is be¬ 
neath their glowing expectations of finding 
at the end of their journey. Arrived there, 
their powers are exhausted ; they are warm¬ 
ly welcomed by their friends, high hopes are 
infused into their hearts, and frequently, 
without examination into the real facts 
which ought to determine their final conclu¬ 
sions, they find themselves with a farm on 
their hands, their capital invested, and their 
ready means exhausted. In short, they must 
now address themselves to the sober voca¬ 
tion of going to work and getting a living. 
The new settler has now time to think, and 
after he has irrevocably acted, begin to ascer¬ 
tain whether he has made a right or a wrong 
conclusion. We shall look into this matter 
in another paper.— Ed. 
Books, Pamphlets, Addresses, &c.— 
Our friends have been quite liberal in their 
contributions to our table for sometime past, 
but for reasons given elsewhere, it has been 
impossible for us to read much the past 
month. Ere long we shall be able to “ post ” 
ourselves on such matters, and then our 
readers.— Ed. 
A lazy fellow once declared in a public 
company, that he could not find bread for 
his family. “ Nor I,” replied an industrious 
mechanic, “ I am obliged to work for it. ’ ’ 
