Des Arc citizen., 1859-04-08
AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF OUR
 COUNTRY.

AGRICULTURAL CONDITION oF ouh
 COUNTRY.
 A perusal of MT. John Jays Statistl- cal View of American Agriculture, an address recently delivered before the American Geographical and Statistical Society, (which, by the way, forms proha- ply the most satisfactory general compen- dium of American agricultural statistics that we possess, gives rather discoura- ging impression of the progress ot our national agriculture
 In many staple products the quantity raised has shown a marked decrease in 1850, (the date of our last census, from which MT. Jay has obtained most of the purely statistical portions of his work, ) from that raised in preceding years. Un- til the census of 1860 there can be no means of obtaining further statistics of the kind, and unless there has been marked improvement during the last seven years, the condition of our agriculture IS not very promising.
 For instance, take the wheat crop; al- though it mas not decreased in it's actual amount, it has not increased in proportion to the increase of population. In New England its culture Is rapidly declinng while in the middle States it is nearly stationary, and our chief supplies now come from the northwestern district. In New York the crop, in lS40, was over twelve millions of bushels, while in 1850 | 1t was but nine mllions-a decrease ol Ilwentv-five pel cent While our State is losing it's preemnence Tn the production of the great cereal staple, Illinois and the vicinal States almost make up for t, and Chicago Is fast becoming the most exlen- sive granary in the world, already rival ing Odessa, Danlzig and St. Petersburg Referring again to the products ot the entire country, without alludlng to any particular State, we id that rye, oats, | Irish and sweet potatoes, hay and tobac- co have steadily decreased, while cotton, rice and wine have increased. Hops have increased al the rate of five hundred l per cent. owing to the enormous consump- ton of lager-beer. Rice has increased at the rate of nearly three hundred per cent. In lSl0, the cotton produced amounted to elght hundred millions of pounds, in 1850 to nine hundred and eighty millions, in 1855 to one billion and eighty-eight mil lions
 But the great staple production of our country-lar surpasslng in amount even our famed wheat, cotton and tobacco--is Indian corn. It's cultivation has retro graded in no State, and the crop, may be ,ll of bushels in lS40, six hundred millions in 1850, over seven hundred millions Tn 1855, and fully eight hundred millions in 1856. Few people are probably aware of the value of our " Monaa min,'' although Professor Mapes has said the failure of the corn crop for three successive years would bankrupt the nation. 7" Entertain- ment for man and beast might truly be painted on tue gate of every cornfield in the country, for in the West corn is given largely 10 cattle and swine--lhe number | of pigs fattenedon il nearly eqnallng the number of inhabitants. It IS exported to the West IndIes, England and Ireland, i used in sugar factories and distilleries, so that we owe our beef and pork, the En- l glishman owes his sugar and the Irshman his !" dhrop O whisky" to the great American Monda-min.'
 This is all very well, so far as i, goes, but the fact remains that in other necessa- Try products we are retragrading While wine and lager-beer are increasing there is decided decrease in the equally i'm portant products of wheat and potatoes. Though this is partially the effect of dis eases incidental to the product itself, it is also, in great measure. owing to the lack of agricultural laborers While every avenue of trade and every mechanical oc- eupation in our large cities is choked up with competitors, the great agricultural fields of the West suffer for the want of cultivation -T New York Post.