Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1869-11-23
The Error of Western Farmers
Benefit of Home Market Diversity
of Industry Essential to Prosperity
The Necessity Of Agriculturalists, &c.
From The Pitisburg pa. Gazette

From the Pittsburg (Pa) Gazette.
The adaptability of tie various
portions of the Great West--or the
great Center, as it may more properly
be callcd-for the many productions
aud industies essential TO an advan-
ced civilization is not yet by any
means discovered and profited by
People soon discover, it is true, where
wheat can be grown to the best ad-
vantage, and push that particular
branch Of industry or they find the
soil and climate better. adapted to
corn, and cultivate that crop on an
enormous scale, to the neglect Of
others.
The Unsurpassed fertility of the
great new States in the Central Ba-
sin has led to a careless, almost reck-
less, style of husbandry. Breadth
rather than thoroughness, is what is
aimed at and most Of tho farmers
of the prairie States are drawing up
on the immense fertility of their soil
as a spendthrift uses an estate Unto
the possession Of which he may hap
pen TO come, seemingly intent upon
squandering it as fast as no can
Thus almost everything that grows,
except what may be shipped off by
rail and sold in the cities, instead of
being carefully husbanded and re-
turned to the soil, is recklessly burnt
or cast into some stream.
The notion seems TO prevail out
there that deep black soil can never
be exhausted but this is Il great,
and will soon be felt to DO a costly
mistake. True, the depth and color
may remain, but the life and spirit
of that soil can be and is being rap
idly exhausted, as the poor feeble
growth of corn and even Of weeds
upon many of the fields of Illinois
attests. The farmers there grow too
much corn, too much wheat, and too
little of other productions--too many
hogs, not enough of sheep. There
10 too much farming, but not enough
OF industries carried on. The people
of that State have been growing rich
during the past few years, but not
as rapidly as they suppose for If
the draft they are making upon their
soil is persisted in for another gener-
alton there will be, as there ID in the
slayery-cursed South, abandoned
plantations and new migrations to
find fresh soil.
What the West wants is greater
diversity eff industries; markets at
home and not in Chicago, New York
and Europe. They want more short
and less long railway transportation.
They want markets at home for
much of what they produce, from
wheat to pumpkins and straw; and
and in order to have these they must
have manufactures and fabricators OF
a thousand things of daily use among
themselves. 1t is an evidence Of an
Tnwholesome state of things, to say
nothing OF some things more import
ant, that an Illinois or Missouri floor
I should be swept with broom grown
and manufactured on the banks oil
the Come ,ticut, and that the wool
of an Iowa sheep should be carried
by rail !, 800 mules 10 be manufactured
into cloth, and then carried back The
same distance, TO cover the limbs OF
the man who sheared the sheep.
The truth is, where such tribute /.
paid to the carriers, as must neces.
sarily be by people almost exclusively
agricultural, there can be no perm a.
nent prosperity and as soon as the
soil, upon which the people flourish
for while, shall give way, as it soon
must, no matter how fertile it NAV
De, poverty Of the worst kind must
ensue. While recently travelling
through some of the finest portions
OF the West, the reflections passed
painfully through our mind and we
could not but regard the growers OF
corn crops, across whose broad acres
the eye cold hardly sweep, as SC
many spendthrIfts recklessly squan-
derlng the finest inheritage that God
ever gave to his children in this
world.
In no country where agriculture
largely prePonderated over other in.
dnstries, whose producers of food
had to seek markets in distant re.
gions, ever did prosper and the
same will be true of the States lyina
to the west of US unless they quickly
introduce non-producing popula-
ton large enough to balance to some
| good degree the now excessive pre-.
I ponderance Of their one great indus
try.
We know that parties whose profit
lies IN bong made the media of ex.
change between the producers Of
those States and their far-distant
customers are flooding the country
with specious arguments setting forth
the beauties and benefits Of free trade
which means trade that secures
to them the fat profits of their mid
die position, no matter who else may
suffer--and that the agriculturists OF
those States are only too ready to
lend willing ear to such teachers,
and hug the fond delusion still we
know that ere long, perhaps TOO late
for many of them, they will get
their eyes open to see the irreversi-
L. - IL.