1850. 
THE CULTIVATOR, 
233 
the subject, and give to the public a full exhibition 
of facts and principles in a department of horticul¬ 
ture which has heretofore been left in the dark. C. 
E. G. Utica , March, 1850. 
Things Necessary to the Successful Pursuit of 
Agriculture. 
Eds. Cultivator —It would be impossible, with¬ 
in the precincts of a short article, to cover the 
ground occupied by this topic. All that can be 
done here is to throw out a few suggestions upon 
the subject. 
It is often .said of farming, “ Oh! yes, it is a ve¬ 
ry fine thing to write about, and talk about, but 
when it comes to the labor of it, it is a great deal 
of hard work for a very little money.” No doubt, 
as farming is generally conducted, this is a truth ;•— 
but are there not disadvantages connected with the 
pursuit of agriculture, as it has been followed in 
times past and at the present day, which would ope¬ 
rate as strongly against the profits of any other oc¬ 
cupation as it has done against agriculture? 
Among the many, let us look at a few facts. 
Suppose a man, anxious to enter into business, should 
buy him a fine store, and fit it up with many conve¬ 
niences for the reception of goods, and then should 
find out that in so doing he had expended all his ca¬ 
pital, and had nothing left to buy goods with, would 
not this, even with all the facilities of the credit sys¬ 
tem, hamper his prospects for business so much as 
to render his success very doubtful? And does not 
this bear a strong analogy to many cases among 
farmers? We will suppose a man to come in posses¬ 
sion of a farm of fifty acres of land, with the neces¬ 
sary buildings for farming purposes, and one thou¬ 
sand dollars in cash. Now do I not state a fact, 
when I say that instead of keeping the $1,000 as a 
capital to conduct the business of the farm with pro¬ 
fit and success, seven men out of nine would seek 
at once to buy more land, investing the $1,000 in 
this way, and perhaps even buying so much more 
land as to run them in debt $1,000, thereby laying 
them under an interest of $60 or $70 a year, besides 
depriving them of any capital wherewith to improve 
their newly acquired property. In this situation, 
then, no matter what a man sees which might be an 
improvement, and one of very great advantage too 
to his farm, he is obliged to let it go “to a more 
convenient season,” for want of means to carry it 
through. Men require capital for the successful 
pursuit of trade, commerce and manufactures. Is 
it at all wonderful then, that capital should be re¬ 
quired for the successful pursuit of agriculture? 
Nay, is it not more wonderful that men can start as 
they often do, with little or nothing, make a small 
payment upon a farm, and bringing bone and mus¬ 
cle in direct opposition to capital, after a long strug¬ 
gle, by the aid of perseverance and economy, finally 
gain the victory? It is always and ever a long and 
desperate struggle, this struggle of bone and sinew 
against 6 or 7 per cent, interest. Even sage expe¬ 
rience often stands aghast, and sighs to think that 
what it knows would pay so well, must yet be left 
undone for want of means. But give a man who 
can win this battle, a farm, and a capital adapted 
to its size and situation, and my word for it, he can 
make agriculture a source of profit. 
I will next name experience, as an essental to the 
successful pursuit of agriculture. Experience—ah, 
what a volume does that one word express. Expe¬ 
rience in trade, in commerce, in manufactures,— 
who thinks of entering into and hopes for success in 
any of these branches of social life, without expe¬ 
rience; and shall he hope for success in agriculture 
without it? Does the tyro in mechanics, seek to 
build a house before he learns to plane a board?— 
Does he not learn his art, step by step; and is not 
agriculture an art, and must it not be learned by 
practice, by study, by experience? Without expe¬ 
rience, what is it? It is to the wise in other pursuits, 
a stumbling block. How many men have there been, 
who, tired of a life of toil amid papers and ac¬ 
count books,—tired for a time of brick walls, of 
vain and empty pageantry,—have determined to 
spend the rest of their days amid green fields and 
shady groves? They become farmers—but, alas, 
few qualifications have they for this vocation. 
They bring with them habits of body and mind al¬ 
most unknown to the agriculturist, and after spend¬ 
ing a few years in what is to them a hermitage, 
with impaired fortunes, and disgusted with all that 
appertains to agriculture, they again seek the busy 
marts of trade. Had agriculture been to them a pro¬ 
fitable investment, they might have liked it; but it 
was a losing business. Alas, experience was want¬ 
ing to teach them how to invest their capital. 
If a man has a taste for agricultural pursuits, and 
capital enough to see him safely through all the ru¬ 
diments of the science, and to bear him through all 
the hard knocks that his purse will get from a want 
of experience—if, in short, be has capital enough 
to pay for his experience, and taste enough for ag¬ 
riculture to consider it well spent, it may do; but 
let no man of very limited means undertake to con¬ 
duct the business of a farm without experience, un¬ 
less he wishes to make shipwreck of his property. 
And what I say here, I say again is not peculiar to 
agriculture. No man can be a good lawyer, a good 
doctor, a good merchant, a good mechanic, without 
practice, study, experience; why then should he be 
a good farmer without them? 
Order , System and Economy without these, no 
man can be successful in conducting the business of 
a farm; but as these subjects have recently been dis¬ 
cussed at some length and with much ability, in the 
pages of The Cultivator, I shall only make a re¬ 
mark or two concerning them. If a man neglects 
these things, capital will be expended without a 
profitable return, and even experience will be of lit¬ 
tle avail. That man cannot expect to prosper, who 
leaves everything at odds and ends. If grain is 
sown, and cattle pastured in adjoining fields, with 
little or no fences around them, in all human proba¬ 
bility the grain will be destroyed. If pigs are al¬ 
lowed to wander about a man’s yard, and now and 
then to get into his garden, it is not very likely he 
will have many vegetables for his table—and so too 
of a hundred other things which might appear very 
simple to be mentioned in a book or paper, but 
which are nevertheless true. Such things certainly 
exhibit a want of order, a lack of system, and ve¬ 
ry poor economy. 
I shall now mention Book-farming, as a very ne¬ 
cessary thing for the successful pursuit of agricul¬ 
ture. Yes; book-farming—that terrible bug-bear 
to the so called practical farmer—for notwithstand¬ 
ing all the attempts which have been made to define 
book-farming, and to show that it is in the main but 
the gathering up of practical experience, still the 
practical man, as he calls himself, flies from it as 
the wild horse would from before the locomotive. 
I am sometimes ready to ask, were there ever men 
in the world, savage or civilized, so blind to their 
true interests as many of our farmers are?—Books 
have been written upon almost all subjects;—trade, 
commerce, manufactures, the sciences, the mechan¬ 
ic arts, navigation, have all come in for their share; 
