The south-western. [volume] (Shreveport, La.) 1852-1870, 1857-06-17


.ers we have accounts of actual famine both
man and beast starving TO death. The Louis
vile Courier accounts for this melancholy state
of affairs as follows:
The inhabitants of cities and dwellers in the
country are all complaining of the exorbltant
prices they have to pay for their daily food
Meate is high and flour is high, and meal is
high, and vegetables are high, and groceries
are high. The same money that now goes to
nourish single man, would have fed family
year ago. A dollar will gather but few
things in our daily markets, to say nothing OF
the staple groceries at home that are not pur-
chased every day. -ss ~. -'
But it is needless to cry out against the pri-
ces. They will continue as they are, if they
do not increase, until a change comes over the
policy Of our people. Too many Of our popu-
latlon are attempting to live without labor, and
too few are engaged in agricultural pursuits.
The soil is not sufficiently tended, and we must
submit to high prices for food until more acres
are cultivated. .a. .--.
Too many Of our citizens attempt to live by
their wits Too many are engaged in wild
speculatlons. The Kansas mania, the Nebras-
ka fever and the Minnesota malady, have taken
foo deep hold upon the hearts of. foreigners,
as well as natives. Nor do these emigrants to
to the new territories go there to make citizens
and cultivate the soil as they should. On the
contrary, they drain the older county of the
spare capital, and when they get to the scene
Of action, instead of buying lands to cultivate,
they buy them for the purpose Of specializing
on their ncighbors. They buy and sell, and
buy and sell again, while no one earns his hon
est living by the sweat of his brow, or adds to
the granary of the world. 81
Times will be DO better, and money matters
no easier, and food no cheaper, until more men
cease attempting to live by their wits, and 90
to cultiyating the soil National wealth must
come out of the ground, it will not come from
wild speculation. There must be men at work
to support the spectators, or all will fall into
one common and irretlievable ruin.
America is the field for agriculture. Lands
are rich, abundant and cheap. If half The
idle hands in our country were turned to agrl
culture, we could feed the millions of the earth,
and wealth and prosperity and happiness would
follow. But until more minds are turned to
agriculture, we may expect hard times and high
prices to continue.
In referring to this subject, the Albany Ar
gns has the following sensible views:
The scarcity of food in various parts of the
west amounts to a famine. In some of the
counties of this State the food of animals is
too costly, and the farmers have had to kill
their beeves and part with their horses.
In northern Michigan the destitution is so
great, that the people are fleeing to the towns
for food and public meetings are held through
the State, to forward the means of subsistence
] to the sufferers. It is little better in the far
west.
In Iowa, the traveller finds no hay or straw
for bis horse at any of the hotels. At Des
Moines corn is considered cheap at two dollars
and can scarcely be had at that. 1t is report
ed that five dollars is the regular price in many
places between there and Council Bluffs. Dead
horses and cattle along the road are said to be
common sights. Wheat seems to be nearly as
scarce as hay and corn. Flour is said to be
selling at FIVE dollars and five dollars and fifty
cents per hundred pounds, and rising. High
as this price is, farmers who could afford 1t,
were feeding their carriage horses on wheat.
In Chicago, the groccrs were importing po-
tatoes from New York, and beans from New
Hampshire, and cucumbers, in brine, from Con.
nectcut If the Garden City does Ahis-the
city of unnumbered railroads, and of boundless
water communications--what may we not ex-
pect from the more isolated communities of the
west.
The causes of this dearth of agricultural
products are social rather than political. They
are to be found in the inertncss and lmprovl-
dence of the agricultural class. The orchard,
the nursery, the kitchen garden and the poultry
yard are neglected, and the grain fields and
meadows are neglected and left to careless and
neglectful culture. There is no factory, nor
machine nor enterprise that declares such divi-
dends as the farm. The government is annu-
ally thoWing into the market millions OF acres,
which according to all the laws Of trade, les
sens the value of the stock in the hands Of the
present possessors. But in spite of this COM
petition, the lands rise, land the products there
of are undergoing constant enhancemenC
1t is perhaps, owing to this enhancement,
that the agricultural classes have become in
different to their pursuits. They do not work
the machine called Gland" with the labor that
it requires. They multiply their acres, but
they do not increase the number of their hus-
bandmen. Instead of giving to every twenty
acres a laborer, they scarcely afford employ
ment to one on a hundred acres.
The wives and daughters of farmers, instead
of taking charge of the poultry yard, the gar
den and the dairy, and reapiny generous in
comes therefrom, expanding their hearts and
strengthening their frames, slmper their silly
lives away in mock gcntiIities.
We hear occasionally of woman's lights and
wrongs There is not daughter or a wife in
the country that could not have a few acres of
her own, which devoted to the raising Of pot.
herbs. or flowers, or fruits would afford COM
parative fortune. An English woman does not
disdain to supcrinend the piggery even, while
the dairy is her exclusive domain. The de-
! scendans Of the HoIlanders and Germans re-
tain to this day the domestic economy Of their
nation and you will hear as little of famina,
as of woman's rights, among the farmers Of
| Pennsylvania, or of central New York.
Wherever agricultural labor is systcmaliscd,
where the farm is regarded a machine which T.
must be kept moving as other machinery is in
order to makeit pay-which must be repaired
and watched as other machinery, and worked
for distant results as we'll as present profits, it
has paid more richly, than almost any other to
which time, capital and skill has been devoted.
A glance at the rising scale of prices sug-
gests much, not only to the farmer but Is al.
classes: