THE CULTIVATOR: 
A MONTHLY PUBLICATION, DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE. 
VoL. IV. 
ALBANY, JULY, 1837. 
No. 5. 
PUBLISHED BY THE N. Y. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
J. BUEL, Conductor. 
O’ Office No. 3 Washinglm-street , opposite Congress Hall. j~r 
TERMS.— Fifty Cents per annum, to be paid in advance. 
Special Agents.—Jv dah Dobson, Philadelphia—Messrs. Hovey, Boston 
Israel Post & Co. Booksellers, 88 Bowery; Alex. Smith, Seedsman, Broad- 
way, and G. R. Garretson, Seedsman, 111 Fulton-sireet ? N'e'w-York.— 
Alexander Walsh, Lansingburgh, gratuitous agent. Any gentleman who 
will enclose us $ 5 , free of postage, will be considered also a special agent, and 
will he entitled to every eleventh copy, or its equivalent, as commission. 
[jj= The Cultivator, according to the decision of the Post-master General, is 
subject only to newspaper postage, viz: one cent on each number within the 
stale, and within one hundred miles from Albany, out of the state—and one 
and a half cents on each number, to any other part of the Union. 
THE CUJLTSVATO U . 
TO IMPROVE THE SOIL AND THE MIND. 
seek their level in what they consider the higher classes of society. They 
do not go to these schools to learn to work , or to learn to live by work, _ 
in the common meaning of these terms—but to learn to live without work 
—above work. They are virtually wi hdrawn from the producing classes. 
These young aspirants flock to the learned professions, and the genteel 
employments, as the avenues to honors and to office; and notwithstanding 
that labor is taxed heavily, in one way or another, to supply their real or 
imaginary wants, yet the genteel professions have become so overstocked, 
and the threshold of power so thronged with supplicants, that hundreds 
and thousands are thrown back, as parasites, upon society, exhibiting the 
melancholy spectacle of men, born to be useful, but unable, or unwilling, 
from the bias of a wrong education, to become so Had these men been 
taught to look upon labor, as it truly is, a necessary, healthful, indepen¬ 
dent, and honorable employment, and been instructed in its principles 
and its practice, while young, they would have cherished its interests, re¬ 
spected its virtues, and cheerfully shared in its toils and its pleasures. We 
seek not, by these remarks, to pull down that which is, but to build up 
that which is not. It is not that we love a part less, but the whole more. 
We would raise the standard of labor, without depressing that of litera- 
03 - We promised to increase the quantity of matter in the Cultivator, ture 
This has been done by using a smaller type. Each number of this publi¬ 
cation now contains as much matter as ninety-five pages of Chaptal’s Che¬ 
mistry applied to Agriculture, and about as much letter press as four 
weekly, or one monthly number, of the Penny Magazine, reputed to be 
the cheapest publication in the world. The Penny Magazine sells at me 
dollar and fifty cents per annum, the Cultivator, containing about the same 
quantity of letter press, sells at— -fifty cents ! 
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 
In pursuance of the recommendation of the State Agricultural Society, 
the subscribers, a committee appointed for the purpose, will meet at the 
City Hotel, in Albany, on the second Tuesday in July inst. at 10 o’clock 
A. M. to examine and test any agricultural implements which may be oi- 
fesed for their inspection; and to certify to the merits of such as they may 
find deserving of public patronage. Inventors and venders of new imple¬ 
ments and machinery are invited to attend, and previously to notify the 
secretary, J. K. Paige, Esq. of the implements they intend to exhibit, by 
letter, post-paid. Julv 1, 1837. JOEL A. NOTT, 
A. VAN BERGEN, JESSE BUEL, 
H. BURDEN, J. P. BEEKMAN. 
03 - Publishers of newspapers will render a public benefit by giving a 
gratuitous insertion to the above notice. 
WHAT IS A USEFUL EDUCATION? 
We put the question in reference to the great body of American youth, 
who are to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, and, under Pro¬ 
vidence, to wield the future destinies of our country. Two principles 
should govern: Teach them to provide for themselves hono¬ 
rably, under any ordinary contingency,— and qualify them to become 
useful to society. The times, as well as universal experince, abun- 
dandy admonish us, that however the children of wealth may indulge in 
indolence and dissipation—while their means last,—the great mass of 
American youth must, and ought, to depend upon their labor for their for¬ 
tunes and their usefulness. Fortune is at best precarious; patrimonial 
dependance is uncertain, and reliance upon the friendship or charity of 
the world, or upon office, is frail and often debasing. Self-dependance is 
the only sure stay. We are ever most willing to help those who help 
themselves. Productive lahor is the legitimate source of all our wealth, 
individual and national; and this labor is profitable to the individual and to 
the nation, in proportion to the measure of intelligence and scientific 
knowledge which guide and direct its operations. Hence it is of prima¬ 
ry importance, that our youth should be efficiently taught to labor, and 
that their minds should be early imbued with that kind of knowledge which 
will instruct them in the principles of their business, render it honorable 
and make them independent in conduct and in fortune. 
We have, to be sure, colleges and academies in abundance, more than 
can be well supported, or that can be made economical and useful. But 
these are in a measure consecrated to the learned professions—to the 
privileged few—for they are privileged, inasmuch as they are the exclu¬ 
sive recipients of public bounty in the higher branches of learning. Pro¬ 
ductive labor derives little or no advantage from their teachings. Few of 
the youth who enter their halls ever seek for a livelihood in the laboring 
arts. They learn to look upon labor, as servile and demeaning, and to 
NO. 5 —VOL. IV. 
We have common schools too, munificently endowed, where all may 
acquire the rudiments of knowledge, but the rudiments only. They teach 
nothing of the sciences which are necessary to the successful prosecution 
of the arts—and give no instructions in the best models of practice. They 
neither learn the boy how to provide for himself, nor fit him for extensive 
usefulness. They lay the foundation, but they do little to build up arid 
beautify the temple. 
We find in the London and Westminster Quarterly, in an article on the 
means of lessening the evils of pauperism, some very apposite remarks 
upon this subject, which we here transcribe: 
“ We advocate,” says the Review, “ both for England and Ireland, the 
necessity of a national provision for the moral and industrial training of 
the young. In the old we cannot hope for much improvement. But the 
new generation springing up might be modelled to our will. Schools are 
wanted; but not such as are now spreading over the country, to teach a 
little reading and writing, as if that embraced the whole business of life, 
and the whole duty of man—schools in which both boys and girls should 
learn to employ both their heads and their hands—in which they should 
be taught practically the use of various tools, and in which such general 
information should be imparted, relating to different branches of industry, 
[the rights and duties of citizens,] and the resources of other countries and 
their own, as would enable them to begin to mount the uphill path they 
would have to climb in after life, with a'heart full of hope, and with a spi¬ 
rit of energy and intelligence which no difficulties would overcome.” 
Who will tell us why it is, that classic schools, available only to those 
who design to live without.labor, are made the special and exclusive ob¬ 
jects of legislative bounty, in regard to the higher branches of instruction? 
Why is it, that six or seven thousand youths, which is about the number 
in our colleges and academies, should receive gratuities from the public 
treasury, till the aggregate exceeds three millions of dollars, to enable 
them to live without work, while half a million ofotheryooth, with like ca¬ 
pacities and like claims, destined to lahor, and to augment the resources, 
the wealth and the happiness of their country, are denied a miserable pit¬ 
tance, in the higher branches of knowledge, to qualify them for their more 
important duties in society? Is not knowledge as beneficial to the arts of 
labor, as it is to the learned professions? Is it not as efficiently and bene¬ 
ficially applied in developing the riches of the earth, in perfecting the me¬ 
chanic and manufacturing arts, and in augmenting the products and profits 
of labor generally, as it is in the warfare of party politics, in the chicanery 
of the law, and in prolonging unprofitable debate in our legislative halls? 
May not natural science be as profitably studied and applied on the farm, 
where nature is constantly presenting new subjects of illustration and ap¬ 
pliance, as in the town or in the closet? Is not chemistry, which instructs 
us in the nature and properties of all bodies, as useful to the farmer, in as¬ 
certaining the qualities of his soils, and their adaptation to particular crops, 
and in regulating the multifarious operations of husbandry,—and to the 
artizan, in managing his various processes,—-as It is to the lawyer, the 
statesman, or the divine? There is probably no employment in life that 
embraces so wide a scope of useful study, as that of cultivating the soil. 
The great use and end of science is to improve art, to impress us with a 
sense of our obligations to God, and of our duty to man. In truth, science 
belongs to, and constitutes an integral portion of the arts, and cannot be 
divorced from them without throwing us back into a state of semi-barba¬ 
rism, such as now debases a great portion of the population of the old con¬ 
tinent. Why then teach science exclusively to the few, who have com- 
