The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-10-11 00:00:00

AGRICULTURE IN AMERICA,

The Times of Wednesday published the following Interest-
ing letter from its Special Correspondent In New Yorkl—
Travelling from New York to Boston, a distance of
240 miles, by way of Newhaven, Hartford, Spring-
field, and Worcester, ample evidence is obtained of the
industrial prosperity of these and other thriving towns.
Mills and factories are running full time; the unem-
ployed labour which was common a few months ago is
absorbed; most firms have orders booked which will
keep them occupied for months; and it is reported
that several houses which were wont to take Govern-
ment work have tleuturLed to bouLl iu tonal:re, utho
pleathat they have as much general businesses they can
profitably overtake. It is well that these iron, texile,
and other industries are prospering, for this portion of
the New England States is not of high agricultural
importance. The limestone and granite rocks are
thinly covered by a poor soil ; great boulders dot the
surface as they do on the Scottish and Cumberland
mountains. The pleasantly undulating country is
varied by lakes, rivers, and huge arms of the sea, and
abundantly clothed with moderate-sized, sometimes
with poor, scrubby timber, including oak, elm, and
the various firs familiar at home. The timber is
chiefly used for firewood. Neither winged nor four.
footed game are found in the woods. Fences seldom
enclose this line of railway, which passes unpro-
tected along the streets of towns and villages, by
country roads, and through unenclosed plantations,
the boom of the loud bell or the hoarse screech of the
engine-whistle warning away trespassers. The houses
in the villages and on the farms are small, mostly
built of wood, and annually lime-washed, to protect
them from the glaring summer sun, which is also kept
out of the rooms by green-painted Venetian blinds.
Reclaimed from the woeds or taken up along a river
bank are scattered here and there small farms, which
are often under 20, and rarely exceed 50, acres. The
fields, usually of four or five acres, not always very
symmetrically shaped, are enclosed by rudely-
built low walls, made with the stones so super-
abundantly piled about. Indian corn is the
crop chiefly cultivated; wheat, oats, and small
patches of turnips and potatoes are occasionally
seen ; clover and timothy grass are grown, and
thrive for several years. Around the house is usually
a small garden, not always as tidy or productive as it
should be, and often flanked by a few fruit trees,
seldom worthy the title of an orchard. About the
farm premises and in the valleys are portions of per-
manent grass, mown for hay and subsequently grazed,
often in want of draining and seldom made the best of.
As in England, a good deal of the hay, notwithstand-
ing the use of the canvas caps for the cocks, has been
spoilt by rain and flood. The chief business of these
small farmers is the production of milk and butter,
which are disposed of in the neighbouring towns
and villages, the milk bringing lit a quart, the
butter 93. or 103. a pound. The cows are non-
descripts, often with a considerable dash of the Hol
stein, and susceptible of much improvement, whether
as producers of milk or of beef. A few goats and
pigs are kept; but during the 500 miles travelling en
route to Boston and beak to New York by one of the
coast lines I never saw a sheep, although a great deal
of the light land appeared more adapted for sheep
than for cattle. As already indicated, the greater
part of this district is poor and sterile ; and even
under the best agricultural management, and although
generally owned by the occupiers, the land will never
yield very satisfactory returns; while the more pro-
mising industries in the towns and the farms of the
west eV ract the best of the young men. Immediately
around Boston the land is more bountiful, the farming
batter, and the farmers are rather more prosperous.
Few farms reaoh 60 acres, many are not half that
area; most are owned by their occupiers, r nd are
devoted to the production of milk, butter, poultry,
and eggs, and occasionally vegetables. The farmer
and his family do the whole of the work; hired labour
is uncommon. The household lives mainly en what
is preducecl on the farm; expenses for butcher's
meat, groceries, and clothes are not greater than those
of an English agricultural labourer; but, unless in the
ease of sickness, not a cent is spent upon beer, wine, or
spirits; any cider made is sold. But with all their
thrift, the milk farmers lately have not done well.
During summer, when their supplies are at their
height, prices fall sometimes as low as id. per quart
owing to the town dealers being overstocked. The
most hopeful relief of this state of matters is the intro-
duction of separators, such as those used by the
Aylesbury Dairy Company, London, or the somewhat
similar apparatus being perfected in America. Pro-
vided with these separators, the unsold milk would
be rkiu3med, the cream made into butter, the present
waste in great part averted, and consequently a better
price afforded for the milk.
Boston, like most other American towns, is well
supplied with markets. Three to five thousand live
cattle and nearly as many sheep are brought in weekly.
The beasts are useful, well fed, generally showing a
large amount of shorthorn character; most of those I
saw weighed on the hoof 14 00011 n. to 15,001 b., and
had been forwarded, with little loss of condition, from
lldnois and Ohio, and some of them nearly I,COO milts,
from Chicago. As elsewhere in the States, the mutton
is not so good as the beef. A large amount both of
beef and mutton, of which no record seems to be kept,
is forwarded from Chicago and also from New York.
In Boston market beef sells from 61 to 10.1. per
pound ; the butchers complain that the inferior cuts
are in such little demand that a clearance has to be
made at very low prices. Mutton brings from 4 1. to 81 :
superior Canada and Kentucky hams fetch 61; the beat
butter is forwarded from the factories and brings on
an average is, per pound. The vegetable and fruit
markets are piofusely furnished with an astonishing
quantity, quality, and variety. Early fruits and
choice vegetables come all the way from Florida
and the Southern States; but shortly Wyndham
County, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and other
adjacent Ne w England States will contribute their
quota. Grapes, peaches, melons and pears are
now abundant and cheap; half a bushel of peaches
is procured for a couple of shillings. On stands
at almost every street corner, as well as in shops,
at railway stations, and in the trains themselves,
fruit is offered for sale, and the chief purchasers
are the labouring classes. Owing to the great and
growing taste for good vegetables and fruit, which has
enormously increased throughout America during the
' past ten years, market gardening and fruit culture
, have paid better than most other departments of farm-
lug. New York is still better furnished than Boston
, with vegetables and fruit. Early supplies come from

Florida, which begins to forward strawberries in April,
while Maine, in the north, contributes hers in July;
and throughout this vast continent, with its varied
climate and circumstances, some portion is enjoying
its harvest season and distributing its surplus to cus-
tomers often hundreds of miles distant. In many
districts in most directions for 70 miles around New
York the country is specially engaged in gardening
and fruit growing. Long Island for 60 miles from
the city is devoted to vegetables, or "trucking" as
it is locally termed. The plots vary from five to 25
acres and are generally owned by the cultivators.
A great variety of articles are raised in order to insure
against failure ; or rather against markets glutted with
some specialities. The fertility of the light, sandy
soil, 25 years ago almost worthless, is developed and
maintained by liberal doses of manure carried out in
the vans which deliver the vegetables, or in barges, and
by guano and other concentrated fertilizers. The most
successful men do a good deal of their marketing per-
sonally. For distances of 12 or 15 miles the produce
is taken into town in the cultivators' own vans; but
henvily laden trains night and morning deliver the
produce of more distant districts. Up the Hudson, on
New Jersey Island, in Delaware, and on the rich, deep
barns around Philadelphia, gardening and fruit grow-
ing are industriously cultivated. As elsewhere, these
farms are usually of 20 to 50 acres, and are owned by
the occupiers. Only a very few are mortgaged. On
some the peaches, pears, and other trees are found and
planted by a more successful neighbour, who, for a
term of years, reserves half the produce. One success-
ful nurseryman at Morristown, New Jersey, has thus
a lien over and good profit from about thirty orchards.
The value of these vegetable and fruit farms varies
according to nearness to New York and other local
cirumstances, and ranges from £2O to £BO an acre.

From these American successes useful home lessons
are surely deducible. The American of a certain type
has an instinctive aversion to the pursuit of an unpro.
fitable ; he has a wonderful capacity for
accommodating himself to circumstances. If wheat
growing does not pay, he tries dairying or gardening,
and, failing that, will cut down lumber or split rails,
keep a store, or "run a hotel," or even make politics
his profession. A successful New York merchant, re.
forting to the readiness of the race, exclaimed the
other day, "I guess if a thoroughbred Yankee gets
into a teakettle, he pretty quick kicks a hole and lets
himself out. Such extraordinary smartness and ver-
satility are scarcely to be expected of those "not to
the manner born," But British farmers certainly are
not compelled to pursue unprofitable practices. They
need not go out of their own vocation; they cannot
cultivate the profusion and variety of vegetables and
fruit produced here; they may find it difficult to keep
themselves and families and clear regularly, as many
of the Long Island " trucksters " do, 100 a year from
ten acres of vegetables and fruit; but they can pro-
fitably enough grow many of these useful articles, and
the demand for them well deserves to be encouraged
as a means of increasing the health and advancing the
sobriety of the British public.

In a leader on the above letter, The Times re-
marks :
". . . . There are other lessons which America may teach
us, besides the advantage of producing milk and butter and
vegetables in the place of corn. This we shall learn in due
course, as it seems likely to be of service to us. Cultivation
which ceases to pay expenses and to yield a fair profit over
will be abandoned in favour of some other form of industry,
either in this country or abroad. Market gardening and dairy-
farming will obtain their just share of recruits, with some
danger of a diminished rate of profits both to new and to old
lands. But from the machinery for saving labour which has
been adopted in America we may take lessons with more
certainty than they will be of value to us. America can
send us corn at a low price, not only became she can grow
corn more easily than England can, but scarcely less because
she has learned to economise both time and labour at every
stage in the transmission of it. The letter we pablshed
lately from our Correspondent gives some important in-
stances to this effect. A vessel which has been loaded
with corn at New York in a single day takes ten or
twelve days to unload when she arrives at en English
port. The loading has been done by machinery. The un-
loading is done by hand work, at a considerably greater
cost, and with a delay which stands, of course, for so muck
extra expense in ship hire, or, in other words, in freightage.
The exportation of corn has been made a great commercial
business in America, and this to an extent with which there
Is nothing in this country to correspond. Railways and
merchants lay themselves out for it, and do their utmost to
facilitate it. A keen appreciation of novelty, a readiness to
adopt improved processes, and the extensive application of
machinery are, our Correspondent says, important
elements in the industrial successes of the United
States. We are no strangers in England to the appli-
cation of machinery to the industrial arts. But the
supremacy we claim in this matter might be main-
tained more certainly if it were aided by the mental habits
our Correspondent finds in Americans, and which are,
perhaps, not equally conspicuous in ourselves. Ecglishmen
of all classes go well in a groove ; but change they dislike of
all things. The result is that they are sometimes un-
pleasantly made aware that they live in a changeful world,
and that they are bound under heavy penalties to snit them-
selves to its ever-var}irg conditions. An instinctive aversion
to the pursuit of an unprofitable camel; may be a less
distinctively American feeling than our Correspondent
appears to fancy it. Eoglishmen as little as Americans love
to carry on business at a loss. But in the capacity for
accomodating himself to circumstances the American may
be granted to excel. The Englishman may at least learn to
follow at his own pace where he is not willing to take the
lead. He may thus retain his dislike for novelty in the
abstract, and surrender it where novelty comes to him with
its first shine worn off it, and where there is already prece-
dent to be urged for it."