THE CULTIVATOR. 
163 
DR. LEE’S REPORT ON AGRICULTURE. 
The following report from the Committee on Agriculture, to whom 
was referred so much of the Governor’s Message as relates to that 
subject, was submitted to the House of Assembly of this State, by 
Mr. D. Lee, on the 20th March: 
Speaking of agriculture, the Governor says: “ The interest in¬ 
volved is not merely the most important committed to our charge, 
but more important than all others.” 
This is no more than a just appreciation of that portion of the pub¬ 
lic interests committed by the House to the charge of your commit¬ 
tee. Happy shall we be if any thing we can say or do shall serve 
to lessen the hard work now expended in producing a pound of 
wool, a firkin of butter, or a bushel of wheat. 
Agriculture is a subject that public men are far more inclined to 
praise than to aid by any legislative enactments. However others 
may regard the interest of rural industry, your committee believe 
that, while legislating for half a million of farmers, we owe them 
something more than empty commendation, something better than a 
heartless lip service. 
It is known to all that no class in the community give so much 
muscular toil for $100, as do the common field laborers in the State 
of New-York. The hard work of skillful farmers is bought and 
sold at nine or ten dollars a month, and twelve hours’ toil is cheer¬ 
fully performed each day. But the mechanic, the banker, the mer¬ 
chant, the broker, or the professional gentleman, thinks his service 
very poorly rewarded if he do not receive three or four times that 
sum. 
If a man whose whole life is devoted to the cultivation of the 
earth, does not and cannot earn so much as the merchant, the physi¬ 
cian or the lawyer, in the course of a year, pray tell us what is the 
cause of this inability, that wise legislation may remove it. And if 
the agriculturist does earn as much as any non-producer in the State, 
then please inform us how it happens that an experienced farmer 
must sell his labor at $120 a year; when he cannot hire one experi¬ 
enced in the mysteries of the law or medicine for less than $1,000 a 
year. 
Surely the toiling husbandman needs , if he does not deserve , as 
many good meals, as much good clothing, and as fine a house as one 
that merely studies to acquire, not to produce, the good things of this 
world. Nevertheless, the fact is notorious that ihe great body of our 
rural population somehow contrive to work a little harder and fare a 
little poorer than any other class in the community. 
We learn from reliable statistics that paupers increase among us 
much faster than population. The number that live from hand to 
mouth, only one step from the poor-house, is increasing with fear¬ 
ful rapidity. There are already more than 500,000 peqple in this 
State wholly dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread. 
No government can exceed us in bestowing idle praise on honest 
productive industry. But what has this Legislature ever done to se¬ 
cure from the grasp of avarice, to each hungry mouth and naked 
back, a fair equivalent for all the food and raiment called into exist¬ 
ence by the mind and hands which God has given to each person ? 
In our fierce scramble to exchange with the coipmon farmer ten 
hours’ work for ten days’ work, are we sure that we do not tram¬ 
ple under our feet every principle of justice, and every right of hu¬ 
manity ? 
What great public good is there in a system of legislation, which 
operates practically in a way that gives to one family ten times more 
than it really needs, and compels twenty families to live on half al¬ 
lowance? How long shall we foster in the breasts of a favored 
few, that morbid “love of money” which is the “root of all evil?” 
Never till this unnatural appetite for needless wealth shall be aba¬ 
ted as a public nuisance, by removing from the masses the ignorance 
that feeds it, will agricultural labor be as well rewarded as the mis¬ 
employed intellect, which now reaps where it has never sown. The 
increasing pauperism, suffering and crime, so common in the land, 
spring not so much from a lack of the comforts of civilized life, as 
from their unequal and unjust distribution. 
If the legislature will do as much to instruct the producing classes 
how to keep and enjoy the entire proceeds of their honest toil, as it 
does to teach all non-producers how to exchange their shadows for 
the workingman’s substance, nine-tenths of our growing taxes for 
the support of the poor, and the punishment of crime, will cease for¬ 
ever. On the contrary, so long as three-fourths of any community, 
give the products of three, four, or six hands, for the little earnings 
of one hand, just so long will hungry mouths, naked backs, and 
houseless heads, claim assistance by a tax on the property of those 
that are better off. According to the official report, the direct tax in 
this State for the year 1844. was $4,243,100. This will soon be 
$8,000,000, unless we cease to manufacture paupers, criminals, and 
needless litigation. 
In the common business transactions of society, men submit to be 
plundered an hundred times, from a seeming necessity. This neces¬ 
sity will always occur, so long as we refuse to be content with a sum 
equal to the products of one pair of hands. We violate a law of our 
being, when we strive to obtain a sum equal to the earnings of two 
intellects, and of four hands. It is obvious that should one-half the 
community succeed in acquiring a sum equal to the products of 
three hands to one human being, the other moiety must of necessity 
limit all their food, clothing, houses, farms aad other property, to an 
average product of one hand to each person. Such is the present la¬ 
mentable result of our past unwise legislation. If the alarming evils 
of this system be not corrected, is there not reason to fear that it will 
at no remote period, call down the terrible but just punishment of 
Heaven ? 
Before we prescribe a remedy, let us view the malady in another 
aspect: 
“ To know ourselves diseased , is half our cure.” Our intense anx¬ 
iety to acquire property' without producing it, is an eating cancer on 
the body politic ; and he is no patriot, who is unwilling to have the 
sore probed to the bottom. 
There are in this State, at least ten thousand persons, that enjoy 
incomes, on an average, of $2,000 each, derived from interest on 
money, rents, and for personal services. This secures to them an 
aggregate annual income of $20,000,000. Estimating the average 
value of rural labor at $200 per head, and it will be seen that these 
10,000 rich men, draw from human muscle and thought, a sum equal 
to the entire products of 100,000 farmers. 
Of this large sum, they may consume as much as 50,000 laboring 
men produce, and then lay up annually $10,000,000. Let us suppose 
this money is re-loaned, at an annual interest which will double the 
principal in twelve years. In that length of time the income of one 
year will become $20,000,000, and in twenty-four years it will be¬ 
come $40,000,000. 
In connection with the above figures, it is important to bear in 
mind that while interest augments the principal four fold in a quar¬ 
ter of a century, the increase of laboring people to work and pay 
this interest, is only 100 per cent, in the same length of time. Now, 
is it not clearly demonstrated that, by increasing our tax on produc¬ 
tive industry four times faster than the human family increase t.e 
work and pay suGh tax, that pauperism must also increase, much 
faster than the population ? 
Had not the productive power of man’s physical strength been 
largely expanded by the aid of lavor-saving machinery, propelled by 
steam and water, within the last twenty-five years, the number of 
paupers in this State, and of those just above public charity, would 
be double what it now is. 
One of the greatest misfortunes that fall to the lot of the farming 
community is their extreme proneness to incur liabilities, and under¬ 
take the payment of interest. These people do not sufficiently study 
the relation that capital bears to humanity. They forget that a hu¬ 
man being, who must have more than 1,000 meals, to say nothing 
of clothes, in 365 days, cannot safely offset liis productive labor 
against the service of dead matter. 
He should freely give for the use of capital, all it can earn with¬ 
out the aid of human muscle and thought, but no more. The poor 
farmer should ever bear in mind the fact that no amount of silver 
can possibly produce one kernel of wheat; and if he offset his indus¬ 
try against the use of 3,000 silver dollars, he must either eat what he 
had before earned, or what some other man produces, or he must 
starve. 
How cruelly have thousands suffered, because they failed to re¬ 
member that a debt on land will last for 100 generations, and extort 
from poor, toiling humanity, an annual tribute more remorseless than 
the grave. Beware, then, how you degrade the human intellect, 
and human flesh and blood. These greatly need, for their full de¬ 
velopment and comfortable support in infancy, manhood, sickness 
and protracted old age, the entire proceeds of one pair of honest 
hands. Never forget that whatever you give to inert matter, is so 
much stolen from a living soul and living body. This great truth 
should be known, that no man can make a beast of burthen of his 
physical frame, and not inflict infinite wrong on his immortal mind. 
To supply our natural physical wants, no one need labor beyond 
what is necessary to impart health and vigor to his body and his 
mental faculties. Why, then, degrade a human being almost to a 
level with the ox that he drives, by compelling him, like the patient 
ox, to give to the world twice as much as he receives in return ? It 
is thus that we create that rebellion against our unwise and unjust 
laws, which calls for the brute force of military power. It is thus 
that we are so successful in filling our poor-houses with paupers, and 
our jails and prisons with criminals. 
Suppose a paternal government, acting on the principle of equal 
and exact justice, were to credit every member of the community, 
every family in the State, with all the good things produced by the 
same, and should debit each person and each family, with all they 
have ever consumed, how few could show a balance in their favor 
of $2,000 ? Under a system of just debit and credit with every 
mouth, back, and pair of hands, how many who are now rich would 
be bankrupts for thousands? How many, now really poor, would 
rejoice in their comfortable circumstances ? 
Suppose every man that has $3,000 at interest, were compelled to 
work at 75 cents a day, to pay his own interest? Who then would 
care to overreach his neighbors, and acquire $3,000 which rightfully 
belong to the families that gave them existence ? 
It is because $3,000 will draw for its holder, from human bone 
and muscle, 200 days’ work a year, for ten generations, that we are 
all so anxious to acquire the means thus to eat bread by the sweat 
of other men’s faces, rather than by the sweat of our own. Human¬ 
ity gains nothing by the circumstance that capital so often changes 
owners. To the producing classes, who work 100 days at 70 cents 
a day, for the service of $1,000 a year, it matters not whether this 
'money has shifted owners a thousand times, or only once. 
Having thus briefly noticed a few of the evils which affect most 
injuriously the great agricultural interest of New-York, your com¬ 
mittee regard it as a part of their legitimate duty to suggest a re¬ 
medy. 
The objects sought to be attained are these : 
First, to increase the productiveness of rural labor. 
Secondly, to secure to every cultivator of the soil the entire pro¬ 
ceeds of his better directed and more productive industry. 
On what does the productiveness of the farmer’s labor mainly de¬ 
pend ? Surely not on his mere muscular strength, for in that case 
the mechanical power of a cart-horse will exceed five fold in value 
the labor of an agriculturist. It is the sound judgment, experience 
and acquired knowledge of the directing Mind, that imparts produc¬ 
tive value to the labor of human hands. And it is mainly because 
the intellect employed in rural pursuits is less developed than the 
mind devoted to other and more professional occupations, that agri¬ 
cultural labor is so poorly reward. The Irulh is that passive intel¬ 
lectual faculties are utterly valueless. They produce nothing. 
Hence* as the mind of a human bem«r lacko wiowf nr i — • ' . , 
