Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1858-10-21

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and are scarcely worth. taking as gift
| That is to say, it would be cheaper to buy
4 good lands at $50 per acre than to take
them as present and make them worth as
much as the former. IH whole sections
they know no other way of rsnovating
worn-out fields than to throw them out into
common and let them grow up to bushes.
and ultimately to wood, then clear and
start afresh- which is "a little behind the
! agricultural wisdom in the days of Moses.
Two-thirds of the originally wooded area OF
our country has been opened to civilization
by pioneers who knew no better-at least,
they dad no better-than to extract the pot
ash from the ashes OF the primitive forest
and sell it for less thar the average cost OF
the process, thls robbing their future in
dustfy, their future hsrvests, of an element
of most Agricultural products worth to them
at lesst sweoty times what they receirefor
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So two-thirds of the bones of our dead
animals have been quietly gathered from
the cutters and rubbish, heaps of our cities
and villages, and shipped off to England or
Belgium. to feriilize fields already far bet
ter supplied with phosphate than ours, the
American farmersslooking on or co-operate-
ing with heediessness that would have
discredited the stupidity Of their own oxen.
After forty years of this ruinous traffic,
they begin to wake up-I mean, a few of
them Edo-snd discover that these bones,
which have not yielded to the gathe.ers
more than ten cents per bushel, and which
they might have secured for an average of
less than twenty, were worth at least, fifty
thai soil from which bones have been
extracted without return, by means of pas.
turing and hay-eutting for century is in
capable Of producing either bones or milk
udvaptageously to the fal mer until the slow
and unheeded extraction of its phosphates
has been counteracted By replacing them in
some form--that whatever is taken from a
good son must somehow be replaced, or
tina: soil is impoverished, and must run out
that :he farmers art consists in extract
ing these elements in their most useful and
valuable combinations, and replacing them
in those of least cost-that he who on,y
knows how to grow. great crops, knowing
or caring little of the bes, means of re-
storing their equivalents to the soil, is ex-
actly half farmer. - ' f"1'-
Are these hackneyed fruthss Theoretical
ly, they mag be; but practically they were
never more applicable, more necessary,
more urgent, than they are to-day. You of
this magn fcent Valley Of he Mississippi
are living as people in their constant and
fagrant violation Blindly confding in the
marvellous fertility and depth of your soil,
you are taking grsin-crop after graiu-crop
so long as grain win grow. in utter forget
fuIness that each bushel exported from your
State your county, renders your soil abso-
lutely poorer, and that the process must end
in utter exhaustion and sterility; foryou are
imparting little or nothing to repay the soil
for these heavy and constant drafts upon it.
In view OF this mistaken policy the grand
improvements recently made or now pfomis
ed in Agricultural Machinery cast before
them shadow that is absolutely baleful-I
In the old days, when the plow was forked
hickory, with the longer prong for beam
and the shorter for coulter,and with uther
implements of like rudeness and inetfic iency
the tillage might be--anI was--yery un-
skillful and erroneous, but the earth was
too slightly scratched to be by any means
exhausted. But now that we are on the eve
of steam blowing aud correspondent sd-
vances, the old safeguards against the. ex.
treme consequences of hum,n ignorance
and perveIseness lose their efficiency. We
talk, for instance, of certain long-cultivat-
ed port ions of the seaboard Slave States as
worn tout, exhausted, ruined, worthless;
when-t they have really never been disturbed
and Of course are not q, ail injured by cui-
tivation. except for tho FIRST four or, five
inches below their surface. So, measurably
with the past cultivation Of the Great Yves:
But when the steam plow comes snorting
and tearins through your great prairies,
turning up and pulverizing their soil to q
depth of two and even three feet, then you
will realize great crops at first, with wei.
come security against both food and drouth,
bat paralleled BY an exhustion of the soil
more rapid and thorough than the world has
eve- known. Then you understand why I
feel and say that European market for
your grain and meat is snare and curse to
you-that il gives to your industry the
drunkard's exhileration that must be follow
ed BY the drrnkard's prostration and despair
that no country ever did or ever can re-
ally prosper by the productions of rude,
bulky staples, and their exchange is dis
tant, foreign lands for the finer fabrics and
tissues which civilized comfort and fashion
require-that every acre Of tie state OF
Indiana would be sworth far more this day
if oale of cloth or a case OF silks could
never more reach US from the Old World.
For every year of the present course of in
dustry and trade is diminishing the essential
value of your soil, and the more boun teous
your harvests the greater is. this fatal de-
probation. Let me hops, at least, that
some means of arresting II will be found
ere your fields shall have shared the fate Of
those Of too many on the .seaboard, out OF
which nearly all that is valuable has been
extracted in the shape Of wheat, corn, to-
bacco, and live stock, and shipped away to
increase the fertility of countries which,
because they are predominantly manufacs-
uring, therefore intelligent, thrifty, and con-
stantly receiving and absorbing agricultural
staples from abroad, are already the most
fertile and producliv on earth. .E h~s5
VIII. rank among the urgent needa Of
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