The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-17 00:00:00

AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

A paper was read at the meeting of the Farmers'
Club in Salisbury-square, Fleet-street, London, by
Mr. James Howard on " Things in America," which
is well worth a careful study both there and in
England. Mr. Howard was no idle gentleman
wandering over the country in search of amuse-
ment and adventure ; he was no sportsman return-
ing full of thrilling anecdotes of tussels with bears
and encounters with Red Indians, but he was a
practical manufacturer, a man well versed in farm-
ing operations, curious about the great nation now
so rapidly taking the lead on earth, anxious to add
to his store of knowledge, and willing to put aside
prejudice and accept improvement where his clear
judgment showed the Americans were ahead of the
English. Mr. Howard is liberal in his ideas—there
is no selfishness in retaining the knowledge he has
acquired ; he appears to have an earnest wish that
the great people who received him so kindly should
benefit by his experience equally with his
own countrymen. The able paper, so carefully pre-
pared by Mr. Howard, is replete with that sort of
information which is of all others the most useful.
His " Things in America" embrace a great variety
of subjects, condensed and classified so as to be
taken in almost at a glance. After a short introduction
in a few sentences, he gives the extent of the
country, and goes on to describe the people
who occupy it. Then, having fixed in the minds of
his hearers the territory and its citizens, he passes
to the real business of the meeting—the agriculture
of America. He shows, first, that it is on agricul-
ture that the progress of the country mainly de-
pends ;" its manufactures being comparatively un-
important, as from three-fourths to seven-eighths of
its population are engaged in agricultural pursuits.
It is not within the power of legislation to alter a
state of things which Nature has decreed. America
is, and must be, the granary of Europe, and the
largest corn-growing country in the world, and no
system of protection to manufacturers can alter
this state of things. " Although," says Mr.
Howard, " we may learn a good deal on various
subjects from our go-a-head kinsmen in the art and
practice of agriculture, the old country is in the
position of teacher. As might be expected in a
comparatively new country, the agriculture, as a
rule, is rough and behind that of England." We
believe this to be the case with all countries when
compared with Great Britain, and it is true wisdom
in our cousins to recognise the fact, and obtain the
information where it can best be given. That
information is best supplied by those who
are thoroughly conversant with British agri-
culture—who have made it the study of their
lives, and whose business it is to manufacture
machinery on the most improved principles for
agricultural purposes. Mr. Howard is well aware,
as a manufacturer, that without a thorough know-
ledge of the objects to which his manufactures are
to be applied, that he cannot attain to eminence in
his own branch of industry. An agriculturist should
know not a little, but a great deal of the manufac-
ture of the instruments he uses; but the converse
of this is still more true, and the manufacturer of
these implements should be thoroughly up in his
knowledge of agriculture. When treating, there-
fore, of agriculture, Mr. Howard was on ground of
which •he had an intimate knowledge, having
studied in the best school. He moves on
to discuss 'agricultural machinery, and here he is
even still more at home. "In America, owing to
the high rate of wages and the difficulty of obtain-
ing an adequate supply of labour, agricultural
machinery, calculated to save manual labour, has
been an absolute necessity. Without the reaping
machine the crops could not be harvested, and with-
out the thrashing machine they could not be
brought to market. Hence the trade in agricultural
implements has reached gigantic proportions. From
inquiries I made, I found that at least 100,000
reaping and mowing machines are made annually
in the States. I was there during the harvest.
Everywhere the reaper was to be seen going—the
scythe and the sickle was just as exceptional as the
reaping machine was in England 10 years ago. The
thrashing machines were very inferior to ours, though
the Americans were apt to think they were far ahead of
us, and that we were a very slow people." An erro-
, neous opinion like this, generally entertained, is