The western Democrat. [volume] (Charlotte, N.C.) 1852-1870, 1868-07-21
A Cause of Poor Crops.
From the Baltimore Methodist

and Hood, the vegetable intruders of parasite
and weed, and the remorseless invaders with
| beak and tooth and augur, waste vastly more in
their inconsiderate way of collecting, than would
keep all the clergy in homes like the St. Nicholas,
and clothe their wives and daughters in the ut
most ugliness of fashion. This consideration
may possibly lead to solution of the otherwise
unaccountable facts that are puzzling and tor
menting farmers and political economists, and
distressing the people with high prices high
| wages, bad trade, and general bad humor 4
With ever extending lines of railroad pene-
| trating ever extending regions of wonderfully
fertile soil with rapid and extraordinary devel-
| opment of Providential reserves of phosphate
elements for renewal of exhausted soil; with
multiplication of ingenious contrivances for
lengthening and Strengthening the laborer's
arms and giving to each natural hand the power
of ten; with great increase of money applied to
agricultural uses; with wonderful augmentation
ofagricultural knowledge difused by innumerable
Journals; with all this increase of means of pro-
duction We are every year falling behind in our
crops of every kind. Look at fruit. 1t is food
of most nutritious and beneficial kind There
was time when peaches and apples grew every
where. We can remember when on this old
worn out farm which our ancestors found in
cane and left in sedge-(D De naortuis nH misi
6onum; SO we only express devout trust that
when they went to the other world the agricul-
tural works OF none but our immediate predeces-
sor were inquired into) Jon this old farm, those
same furious old people, gathered perennial
and abundant crops of apples-and the trees
came down from our grandfather to our juvenile
days. The trees bore as long as they lived-and
bore abundantly. The ground under them was
deep in great cheese-apples, Robinsons, Pippins,
Deals and we do not remember how many other
! kinds. Tenants made cider enough to pay rent
| with; hauling eighteen miles for dollar BAR
rel, (rent was not very large.) Peach trees did
not want any attention. If they did, they did
not get it. There were no curcuzios, no yello,cs,
no borers, in those days Now zoe haze the ,corst
ruit climate an the aoorld that is, of any part of
the world where fruit is producible. In Mary
land, where peach trees grow like willows, and
where thousands of acres are carefully titled to
produce them a fair crop is an accident. Apple
orchards are not worth planting. Pears get
| cracked and the trees blghted Cherries rot or
are destroyed by curculios. Plums are only pos
sible in cities. Ounces are all knotted as If
they had vegetable elephantiasis. Grapes ripen
only now and then, and rot as if that was what
/ they were expected to DO OF all vexatious an
noying, humiliatinG, hopeless pursuits of man
here, there is scarcely any innocent thing more
unsatisfying to soul aud body than trying to
were young everybody who could command
ground enough to plant the trees, had abundance
of apples and pears and peaches and as to cher
ries, they were as plenty and open to the public
as black berries.
But from the loss of the luxuries of fruit, we
seem to be going to rapid diminuton Of the
production Of food Wheat is the bread of the
civilized world, and has been from time ;mme-
mortal. From some cause Or other, or from
many different causes, the production of this
staff of life has been remarkably reduced both
here and in Europe The average production to
the acre in this State is little more than half
what it was, when We began to reconstruct this
hereditary desert. The production of New York
| Ohio and all of the older Western States has
also fallen off heavily. We have not the statis-
tics at hand, but the fact is unquestionable.
The n.idge Or red weevil is continually gaining
on us. This insect nearly drove wheat out of
Genessee, and only the high price enables far
mers to raise it in the Middle States Our
fields now are covered with thick, prolific looking
wheat. Yet the weeyil has come; and day after
day the destruction will 90 on; and We are ut
terly helpless against tiny orange-colored mag
got. Potatoes were once produced in twice the
| quantity we can get now. Vines were never
more vigorous, but blight and rot keep down pro-
duction. In the West the colorado bug eats
the vines; and this destroyer is on his way East
ward. Potatoes were sent from New York to
Illinois last year. Oats produce little more than
half they once did. God, by drought or food
or blight or bug, continually makes our hope Of
abundance fail.
Men of science are busy in trying to find out
the causes of these things. But what for? Sup
pose the Gulf stream has changed its course, can
we set it right? Suppose new climatic causes
OF any kind arc al work, can we change them q
What cantwe do against Gods armies IT insects
Either there is a God, or there is not IF
| nature be God; if attraction and rotation and
electricity and the Gulf Stream be attributes of
God; If bugs are parts of God; if midges and
army worms and curculios are ultimate sovereign
powers, owning no superior control; if all mate
rials are things and God only thought; then we
see no help fer rs but to accept nature we
find it outside of US, and fight it as we best may
with the nature that is in us; then our only re-
source is in science-that is, pretty much in
knowing how bad and how inevitable nature is,
and how little we can avoid or control it.
But if there be a God IF there be Being
who made, who sustains and who pervades and
governs material things. according to intelligent
purpose. and by Unlimited will if this God be
| our God, then it is the suggestion of common
sense to consider why He is thus affecting the
| land and multiplying His scourges year after
year. 1t is all idle to expect relief if He is not
| willing to relieve US. If these troubles come
from Him, He has reason for them. That
reason is in some evil way Of ours. And until
we shall ascertain what it is and turn from it.
we may expect that "IIis hand win be stretched
out still" God cannot now talk TO men except
| by these signs. We are SO stupid that we listen
to no other kinds of speech; and though We
hear this we have taken little heed of it. Our