The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-13 00:00:00

The Farmers of America.

IpBe6oopleinof the United States,
giving the occupa-
tionsne census
7returns o f
the
of
8,8,03
of
enumerates as farmers 2,423,895, and as farm labour-
-24
ers 795,679. These statistics indicate that only a
little more than one-third of the working popula-
tion of the country produced the enormous crops
of that year, which included the following :
Wheat, 173,104,924 bushels ; rye, 21,101,380
bushels ; Indian corn, 838,792,740 bushels ; oats,
172,643,185 bushels ; rice, 187,167,032 pounds ;
tobacco, 434,209,461 pounds ; ginned cotton,
5,387,052 bales, of 400 pounds each; Irish potatoes,
111,148,867 bushels; sweet potatoes, 42,095,026
bushels. The great necessity of the country, in view
of the ease with which a comparatively small por-
tion of its inhabitants can supply all the agricul-
tural products it can consume, is cheap transpor-
tation, so that the enormous exce::s of produce
grown by the farmers of the Western States can
rind a market. Let the railway capitalists of Great
Britain think of this !

The New York papers would appear to have been
making money during the past year. From the advertising
returns the profits of the various concerns are estimated as
follows :—Transcript (official paper), $529,000 ; Herald,
$300,000; Tribune, $185,000; Times, $125,000; Wend,
$llO,OOO ; Post, $95,000 ; Journal of Commerce, $135,000 ;
Sun, $60,000 ; Sunday Mercury, $38,000 ; Commercial Ad-
vertiser, $40,000 ; Express, $35,000; News, loss, $22,000 ;
Nation, loss, $8,000; Round Table, about paid expenses ;
and Commercial Chronicle, loss, $10,900. The Transcript
is owned by the Common Council "ring," of which Wil-
liam M. Tweed is the chief. Its receipts for advertising
are immense, as it publishes all the official matter connected
with the City Cievernment.

The Atlantic and Great Western Railway, with
its connections, is doing much to aid in remedying
this state of things, but if there were half-a-dozen
Atlantic and Great Western Railways all built along
the same line, and in successful working order, they
would scarcely suffice to carry the immense excess
of grain alone from West to East. It has often
been stated by speakers and writers on America
that corn and other grain is so cheap and plentiful
that it is used in some portions of the United States
to burn as fuel. These statements have been
received with incredulity in this country, but
they are strictly and literally true. In Warren
and other towns in Western Illinois, as we
are informed by the Galena (Illinois) Gazette
the " staff of life" is being very generally converted
to the useful purposes of fuel. It is said that a
bushel of wheat or Indian corn will produce as much
heat as a bushel of coal ; and those who have tried
the experiment say that Indian corn in the ear gives
considerably more heat than the same bulk of wood
or coal. Ears of Indian corn can be purchased at
ten cents per bushel, and seventy bushels will mea-
sure a cord. Coal costs twenty-five cents per
bushel; and wood, including sawing, costs nine dol-
lars and fifty cents per cord, which is two dollars
and fifty cents more than the cost of a cord of corn,
besides the fact that the corn lasts longer than fuel,
and produces more heat. In the town of Muscatine,
in the State of lowa, a large steam mill is supplied
entirely with corn for fuel, and it is found superior
to and cheaper than any other.

We entreat the business men and capitalists of
Great Britain to ponder well these facts. We admit,
and are proud to admit, that there has never before
been such general prosperity as is witnessed in Eng-
land to-day. But we know that food is high in

price in this country, and that thousands of the
poorer classes suffer daily privation and hardship on
that account. And yet, within four thousand miles
of England, and scarcely twelve days distant from
our coast, there are millions of bushels of corn and
other produce perishing for want of a market, or
being used as fuel. How true is that old refrain of
an American poet :

" Oh, millions of hands want acres,
And millions of acres want bands."

Ex-Confederate Generals in the Southern

States.

If there is any peculiarity of the American people
which can surprise Englishmen and Europeans, it
is the ready alacrity with which the foremost leaders
of the armies, North and South, have returned to
the pursuits of peace. Many of the more promi-
nent ex-officers of the late Confederacy are setting
most excellent examples in this respect to their
Southern fellow-citizens. The smoke of battle had
scarcely drifted away from the field of Five Forks
before Fitz Hugh Lee was gathering together the
freedmen on his desolated plantation in Virginia,
and engaging them at wages to assist him in work-
ing his broad but wasted acres. General Pillow
also did the same thing in Tennessee, and other
Confederate officers imitated himself and Lee.
hey seemed to realise their position and the con-
dition of the States in which they reside, and with
a true sense of duty they went to work at once,
without waiting to see what the United States Go-
vernment intended to do in the matter of recon-
struction or restoration. Their country was impo-
verished by the war, and the only way to relieve its
wants was to commence immediately to repair their
ruined farms, and place them again in a state of
cultivation. In their estimation it was proper to
leave politics alone, and trust to the wisdom of the
National Government for an adjustment of the
difficulties surrounding them in their new relations
to the freedmen. In• this they acted wisely, and
while numbers of their Southern fellow-citizens are
dissatisfied with what has been done toward restor-
ing harmony, the men who exposed their lives and
jeopardised their property in the cause of treason
have been industriously pursuing peaceful avoca-
tions, and counselling their neighbours, by word
and example, to submit quietly and obey the behests
of their Government.

We learn from Cincinnati the fact that ex-
Generals Pillow, Hood, Heath, Longstreet, and
others, once celebrated in the Rebel ranks,
have been in that city making extensive
purchases of ploughs and other agricultural im-
plements, while at the same time they engaged
some sixteen hundred white labourers to go South
and aid them in developing their plantations. This
movement on the part of these men should exert
a great and beneficial influence throughout the
Cotton States. When such personages as Hood
and Longstreet set the example of enterprise and
submission to the laws, and exhibit a desire to ad-
vance the interests of their section of the Union, it
behoves their countrymen to emulate them, and
abandon the foolish opposition against the Govern-
ment which exists in so many portions of the
Southern States. The best thing the people of the
late rebellious Commonwealths can do is to go to
work, as Hood, Pillow, Heath, and their asso-
ciates have done. Rascality, whether it be steal-
ing, murdering, or plotting treason, is generally
originated among thriftless idlers. An industrious
man is a contented man, and has no leisure to de-
vise mischief. Considering the, miserable condition
of affairs in the late Confederate States, we should
think that work would be the motto, the watch-
word in every Southern community.

The history of Mexico shows that (luring the last
forty years Mexico has had thirty-seven different forms
of government, thirty-two of which were Republic, and
seventy-five Presidents. Its revolutions during that time
have amounted to over two hundred. Many years since
a Mexican protectorate was urged upon the United States
Senate by General Houston, upon the ground that the
Mexican people otherwise would fall 4, prey to some Euro
pean Power. The project was condemned and abandoned.