12 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
from America. Such a complete system could 
hardly be carried out on so large a scale on 
many farms in this country, for few of our 
farmer's have the necessary capital; hut it is, 
after all, the system toward which we should 
work and to which we must look for the per¬ 
manent future of our agriculture. Our farm¬ 
ing can never be perfect, nor anything like it, 
until we shall have reached the point of a con¬ 
stant improvement of the soil. A constant 
deterioration has been a necessary consequence 
of the rapid spread of population over the 
whole breadth of the land, but it must before 
long be followed by a wave of better farming, 
which alone can enable such a population to 
be self-supporting. Happily the improvement 
already made on farms at the East which were 
considered to have been exhausted, shows that 
the injury was not deep, and that the pioneers 
who have been tempted westward by a virgin 
soil have left behind them a fair field for the 
establishment of the better agriculture that an 
older and denser community demands and 
makes possible. 
Surely no one could be better placed than 
the Eastern farmer for the extensive adoption 
of the system of feeding as a means for enrich¬ 
ing the soil. He has a home demand for meat 
which is not likely to fail, and there is appar¬ 
ently no limit to the quantity that Europe can 
take from us. In England especially the price 
of all manner of food is very high, and is 
growing higher every year. Animal food has 
never been used by the laboring classes to any-; 
thing like the extent to which it is with us, and 
the advancing price marks a constantly increas¬ 
ing scarcity. If we can ship our corn from 
Illinois to England and sell it there at a price 
that leaves a profit to the English feeder, we 
should surely do better to feed it ourselves and 
save the freight on the very large proportion 
of it which is lost in the processes of digestion. 
As some one has cleverly expressed it: If we 
can’t pay freight on 20 bushels of corn from 
the Mississippi to Liverpool, let us pack them 
in a pork barrel and try it that way. Thus 
shall we not only save three-fourths of the 
freight, and clear a much better price for our 
crop, but we shall save to our farms the whole 
manurial residuum of the grain with which to 
grow larger crops in future. 
In theory nothing could be better than such 
a solution of the serious difficulties under which 
Western farmers are now struggling. How it 
would work in practice (on a large scale) it is 
not so easy to say. There are difficulties in the 
matter which can hardly be computed, but if 
by any process it ever becomes possible to dis¬ 
pense with the speculators and middle-men who 
block the road between the Mississippi and 
Liverpool, so that the producer shall have no 
unjust tax to pay in the transfer of his products 
and the collection of his pay, there can be no 
doubt of the result. At the same time, in in¬ 
stituting this reform, the farmer must be care¬ 
ful not to reform himself out of existence. 
The speculator and middle-man are there be¬ 
cause they are needed. They are not just, the 
n. .'del that a millenarian would set up, but, 
such as they are, they have grown up in re¬ 
sponse to a living demand, and they are the 
only existing medium for the transmission of 
produce and money between the farmer and 
his final customers. Sweep them off from the 
faoe of the earth to-day and to-morrow your 
occupation is gone. The dairyman of the 
West can not peddle lot! own cheese in the 
streets of T >mt. London is one of his 
great markets, and until he can find some bet¬ 
ter way to reach it he will gain nothing by 
grumbling about the present way. 
Will he gain by grumbling in any case ? So 
long as he must use the bridge, why waste 
breath in abusing it ? If there is anything in 
the signs of the times, we can see a fair gleam 
of daybreak for the farmer in the quarter 
whence other classes are getting relief. It is 
too untried as yet for us to say how much it 
will really amount to, but thus far there ap¬ 
pears no valid reason why cooperation may not 
be of almost unlimited value to the agricul¬ 
tural interest. What is needed in the transmis¬ 
sion of produce is capital and commercial 
skill. By association, farmers ought to be able 
to secure these. At all events, the experiment 
may be made without very serious individual 
risks, and it is worth trying. Its success will 
depend very much on mutual confidence (a 
plant of slow growth in agricultural districts) 
and on the chance of getting agents who will 
work as efficiently for a moderate fixed com¬ 
pensation as they would under the stimulus of 
individual speculation. Cooperation will be 
sure to work well in times of high prices and 
great prosperity; its sore trial will come when 
trade is dull and when money must be lost, 
and the association will always have to com¬ 
pete with the established traders, who have a 
large capital at command, and who are accus¬ 
tomed to take heavy risks. It is no easy matter 
to reform the world’s way of transacting its 
business, but by a well-sustained effort it may 
doubtless be done, and if the best farmers of a 
fertile county will make the effort, agreeing to 
stand by each other through thick and thin, 
they will have a sufficient promise of success 
to fully justify the attempt. 
Orange Judd. 
Among the many requests made by the head¬ 
ers of the Agriculturist probably none has 
been so frequently presented as that asking us 
to publish a portrait of Mr. Judd. For reasons 
which were no doubt satisfactory to himself, 
Mr. Judd has never acceded to this often re¬ 
peated demand. As he is now temporarily 
absent, and so far away that he can know 
nothing of the matter, his associates have 
concluded to risk the displeasure of a single 
individual in order to gratify many thousands 
by the publication of the often called for por¬ 
trait, which will be found upon our first page. 
Thinking that a biography should not be 
written until the subject of it has closed his 
career, we shall here give only a brief sketch to 
include such points as may have interest to 
the readers of the Agriculturist. 
Orange Judd is the son of Ozias Judd, one of 
the pioneer farmers of Niagara Co., N. Y., and 
afterwards one of the first settlers of Kansas, 
where he lost his life in one of the conflicts 
that attended the early history of that State; 
he was born in 1822, not far from Nia¬ 
gara Falls, and passed his youth and early man¬ 
hood in the. hard labors of what was then a 
farm in the “far West.” Having a strong 
taste for the natural sciences, and his desire 
for an education being very strong, he almost 
solely through his own exertions entered and 
sustained himself at the Wesleyan College 
at Middletown, Conn., from which institu¬ 
tion he was graduated in 1847. After com¬ 
pleting his college course Mr. Judd en¬ 
tered the Chemical Laboratory of Yale Col¬ 
lege, where he devoted three years to the study 
of analytical and agricultural chemistry. A few 
years were passed in teaching chemistry and 
other branches of science, and in lecturing 
upon agriculture, after which he, in 1853, be¬ 
came editor of the American Agriculturist, 
founded some years before by Messrs. R. L. & 
A. B. Allen. At that time agricultural jour¬ 
nalism was, if not in its infancy, at least in a 
very feeble state, and editors who had a proper 
foundation in a scientific education were indeed 
rare. In entering upon his editorial career 
Mr. Judd not only brought great industry and 
untiring energy, but a thorough preparation 
for the work. His influence soon made itself 
felt in the paper, and in 1856 he became its 
sole proprietor. When the Agriculturist first 
came into Mr. Judd’s hands one person could 
attend to all the subscription and advertising 
business, and also write the wrappers and fold 
and mail all the papers, a task that now re¬ 
quires some thirty persons for its performance. 
Mr. Judd brought besides editorial ability to 
the paper a remarkable business tact and 
energy. He determined in the first place to 
make a paper that people would want, and in 
the second place to let people know of it, and it 
is to a strict adherence to these two points that 
his success has been due. He from the first 
determined that the advertising pages should 
be as carefully edited as any part of the paper, 
and, though at great immediate pecuniary loss, 
excluded quackery of all kinds and all adver¬ 
tisements of a doubtful character. The subse¬ 
quent increase of the business of the paper, to 
which the publication of agricultural books 
had been added, led to his uniting with Lucius 
A. Chase and Samuel Burnham, Jr., in the firm 
of Orange Judd & Co., and the firm has been 
since enlarged by the accession of C. C. North 
and A. P. Miller. During the early portion of 
his editorship of the Agriculturist , Mr. Judd 
was for several years also the agricultural 
editor of the New York Times. In 1862 
he went to Europe, but soon returned on ac¬ 
count of the disturbed state of the coun¬ 
try at home. During the war he was actively 
engaged with the Christian and Sanitary Com¬ 
missions in affording relief to the soldiers in the 
field, an occupation in which his health was no 
doubt permanently injured. In 1867 he visited 
Europe again, and made an extended tour. 
Being warmly interested in the university at 
which he was educated, and feeling that its 
facilities for teaching the branches in which he 
was especially interested were inadequate, he 
erected at his own expense a large and magni¬ 
ficent building for lecture rooms, museums, etc. 
This building, probably the most complete 
of its kind in the country, is now called 
the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Sciences. 
We have already alluded to Mr. Judd’s great 
industry; he always seemed to forget that 
there was a limit to human powers, and 
until within a few years never thought it neces¬ 
sary to spare himself mental or bodily labor. 
Unwillingly yielding to the advice of others, he 
passed a portion of the winter of last year in 
recreation in Florida, and this winter he passes 
quietly in some part of Europe, where it is hoped 
he will find the rest he has so well earned. As 
to our portrait, we are sure that it will surprise 
many, as Mr. Judd has held the attention of 
the agricultural public for so long that those 
who do not know him suppose him to be gray 
and venerable. Being of a nervous tempera¬ 
ment and having a very mobile countenance, 
he when animated by conversation looks even 
much younger than the portrait represents 
him. Ed. 
