Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1850-07-04
GREEN MOUNTAIN

Ii is feared that this will ever be the case
until schools designed TO teach those branch
es of learning which the practical farmers
greatly need but does not possess, are
established and maintained throughout the
United States. So long as we refuse to
plant 'he seed, it is folly TO expect rich
harvest Of knowledge.
We over estimate the value ef mere phys
cal strength, like that Of the OK or mule,
and under estimate the intrinsic worth of
cultivated, we'll developed reason in practical
agriculture. No inconsiderable degree of
mental culture must precede all scientific
tilage and husbandry. An oak is not
matured from an acorn in day, nor i'll a
year nor matured to form, in single gen.
eratisn, an universally educated and highly
improved race ofmen. Such Improvements
to be general, and fixed in a people as a
distinguished feature in their character,
must be deeply impressed on several success
sive generations. ,.o.
As a class, farmers have few advantages
for being well Informed in the rapid progress
now making in the economical improvement
Of soil cultivated plants and domes'io
animals. This lack of opportunity -
soriohs misfortune, and leads to this pfactl-
cal result. With 5,000,0U0 farm laborels
. ZOO 600 in the Slaveholding, and =,
200 600 III the free States-Amerlcan ag-
riculturists SO misdrect this immense power
of production, that the injury done to 100,
100000 acres of land is nearly equal to all
the aggregate nett profits on the wholerural
industry of the country.
TO illustrate an important fact, as well as
principle, let us suppose that farmer pro-
duces crops worth 1900, and they cost
him, including all expenses for lobor, wear
of Implements, interest on capital, &C,
$3.50 Noninally, he has profit otSl5O !
but it often happens that, if he undertakes
to replace in his cultivated feldsas much Of
potash soda, magncsa, PHOSPHORUS,
soluble silica, and other clements of crops,
as both tiIIage and cropping had removed,
it will cost him $I75 or $500 to effect that
purpose. 1t is only by consuming the
natural fertility OF the land that he has real
lied any profit.
In national point Of view, all labor that
impoverishcs the soil is worse than thrown
away No fact in the science Of political
economy is more important than this. To
reduce a field which in its virgin state produ-
ced forty bushels of corn per acre, down to
twenty in ten years, and then cultivate it
forty years, and harvest only twenty bushels
per acre in place of forty, is equal to loss
of four hundred bushels of corn per acre in
the aggregate, or half the diminished pro
duct, without any equivalent whatever.
Thus to improve land is to wither the mus
Giles Of both man and beast employed in its
tillage. Human toll is often praised for be-
ing hi lilly productive, wheu, had the whole
truth been known, it would be seen to have
been remarkably destructive. Laborueyer
creates particle ofnew matter by plough
ing deep or shallow, but it frequently places
the elements ofgrain, cotton and provisions
beyond the reach of all scientific farmer:
who may live heaeafter, and find the sci
wanting in the raw material for making hui
man food and raiment.
Is 1t not the duty Of Government to diff
fuse among its citizens knowledge cf the
principles of tiIlage, and impress upor then
the obligation which every agrictlurls
owes to posterty not to leave the soil he cuI
tivates in less fruitful condition than he
found it,