State Convention—Grass is King. 
381 
expected would reduce the cost of transporation, and are coming 
due in gold with interest, sold for only seventy cents on the dollar; 
and their buyers paid for them in iron rails of very inferior quality 
at $100 per ton, when a better quality of iron could have been 
bought for $65 per ton in cash; so that our bonds only realized 
about fifty per cent.; and as the railroads were built by construc¬ 
tion-companies, composed of the directors and officers of the roads, 
at thrice their actual cost, besides other leakages and rat-holes in 
the concern, we have concluded that the railroad and wheat busi¬ 
ness, although fun for the carriers and middle-men, is death for 
us. Even if otherwise disposed, our facilities for subsidizing more 
railroads are now crippled by a constitutional amendment which 
limits our municipal indebtedness to five per cent, on the assessed 
value of property subject to taxation. 
Now, friends, what is to prevent us from uniting to save the cost 
of ten or twelve thousand miles of transportation, by getting your 
work-shops and our farms into close proximity? There is no 
revenue, tariff, or customs’ duty, except in New Jersey, levied on 
importations of live Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, 
Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, and Frenchmen; and while you will 
be enabled by coming to America to get many more and much 
larger loaves of bread for your day’s work than in Europe, and be 
invested with the elective franchise and numerous other privileges, 
we shall also gain, on the old slave-labor valuation, from one to 
five thousand dollars, by the acquisition of every able-bodied immi¬ 
grant according to the size or number of his family; besides having, 
in common with you, the manifold and reciprocal benefits of a re¬ 
munerative system of diversified industry, without the friction of 
long and expensive transportation in effecting exchanges of the 
products of our labor and skill respectively. 
Fraternally yours, for butter and cheese, 
Western Farmers. 
REPLY. 
Western Farmers: —Your condition is deplorable. We sup¬ 
posed you were taking advantage of these great natural highways 
of commerce, and were happy and prosperous. Why do you not 
vary your course in farming, by using your bulky crops in raising 
cattle and sheep, which will not only fertilize your soil, but yield 
