EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
453 
duce, inevitably the great work of the pioneer, can be still pursued almost 
exclusively, with lasting profit and benefit. This is a grave mistake indeed, 
and it is folly and blindness for us to listen to the flattery of our British 
cousins over the ocean, about our being “the granary of the world.” Of 
course, with this breadth of rich soil, farming will always be important, but 
we must have home manufactures, and a great home market, if we would make 
farming pay, and have a surplus also to send abroad. 
Agriculture^ alone never made a country rich or civilized. Ireland has a 
rich soil, but England has cruelly crushed her manufactures, and she is poor. 
Portugal and Spain, deluded by England into “free trade,” and, of course, 
with limited manufactures, are poor. France, with the same Celtic race, but a 
more protective policy, and larger manufactures, has more wealth and far bet¬ 
ter farms. So it is the world over. 
It is folly for one class to try to stand alone, or to look upon others with 
jealousy. We depend on each other. Farms or factories only thrive best 
when they are near each other, so that they can help each other easier* 
They are natural allies. Diversified industry is the “ manifest destiny ” of 
the Northwest, and thus the farmers will partake of the common prosperity. 
England has no room for farmers, as we have, and while her manufacturing 
puts great wealth in a few hands, her landless people are poor. Here there 
is room for homes and farms for an independent people. Here are metals, 
fuel, food, and raw materials for textile fabrics in abundance. Here is skill 
and energy, capital increasing, and labor accessible. No country in the world 
has such natural capacity for great and varied manufacturing and farming as 
the Northwest. 
There aae now at work in Europe at least 1,250,000 people, whose products 
are brought to this country for sale. These people you support by sending 
them your grain, at an enormous expense for freight, and buying their 
handiwork. If the 4,000 factories now employed in Europe on American 
fabrics and commodities were transported to the Western States, with half 
the operatives to work them (you could easily furnish the other half), it 
would have the immediate effect to increase the value of your farms four o 
five fold. 
Suppose on the other hand that all the people of the Northwest, with all 
the new emigrants, continue to confine themselves to the production of 
agricultural staples, and that everybody who works at all is driven into that 
employment, what will be the certain result ? Over production, low prices, 
poor, idle, and as an inevitable result in the end, uneducated and vicious 
people. 
Your land is rich to-day but will be poor to-morrow if this exporting pro¬ 
cess goes on. Its exhaustion is only a question of time. The best farming is 
where the best manufacturing stimulates skill. The soil of England is thin¬ 
ner than yours, but her average wheat crop is twenty-eight bushels per acre, 
and that average gains, while in this country we have reduced our yield more 
than half, to an average of only twelve bushels an acre. 
