AMERICAN Agriculture. 
423 
In the near future, our American agriculture must take a higher 
position. In no other country has it advanced more rapidly, and in 
no other has it given greater returns to those engaged in it; but 
with advancing civilization, increasing population and rapidly grow¬ 
ing competition, the mass of farmers must learn to rely more on 
mind than on muscle; to give more importance to knowledge than 
to mere physical strength; must grow to rely on themselves and not 
on legislation, and look for their profits to their farm products and 
not to increase in the selling price of their land. I look forward 
with hope to a higher intelligence, more wisely directed industry 
and a purer integrity among all farmeis as the great means by 
which the difficulties and obstacles in the way of the general pros¬ 
perity of the class may be overcome. I look forward to the time 
when the farmers of all sections of the country, knowing each other 
better, shall respect each other more, and work together more har¬ 
moniously and intelligently, and hence, more efficiently advance 
their common prosperity. 
In ail this, if it be wisely managed, the National Agricultural 
Congress may do much. It is young, but it has reached a position 
of which we have no need to be ashamed. We who are here may 
make this Centennial year the starting point of a career of vastly 
increased usefulness for this association which has called us to¬ 
gether, and give it an impulse that shall cause it to be still young 
and vigorous at the second centennial of our country. 
THE PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 
BY JOSEPH HARRIS. 
Read before the Kational Agricultural Congress at Philapelphia, 1876. 
I have been asked to write a short paper on the prospects of 
American agriculture. I did not select the subject myself. I am 
not a prophet or the son of a prophet, and can only judge of the 
future from the past an I the tendencies of the present. 
To me, the signs of the times are favorable and the prospects 
bright. Given a soil in the same condition and wdth a similar sea- 
