The Portland daily press., 1869-09-03
Letter from n Practical Farmsr-No.I.

Letter from a Practical Farmer-No. L..
FRANK OPINION CONCERNING FANCY FARMING,
AGRlcULrURAL REPORTS, ,&c.-BIENNIAL SEES
SION OF THF LEGISLATURES RECOMMENDED.
To the Editor Of the PresE
There is evidently something yet out Of Joint
in agriculture, and with your permission will
express the views entertained by some of our
farmers. We are naturally the intense enc
mics of every form of imposture. We hate
humbugs implacably, but meet them at every
turn, in religion, in medicine, in courts of law,
in politics, in agriculture. To expose the half
of them in any one OF their departments would
be out of the question. There are Just two
Safeguards against them-honest labor and
intelligence Neither of these alone Is sufficient.
The former is the prerequisite of honesty, the
latter of protection from dishonesty. There
are three ways, said an eminent professor, Of
living, viz: by work, by begging, and by steal
ing Whoever is not getting living by the
first is getting it by one of the other two The
class of beggars and thieves we see must be
large. They, however, reduce their vocation
to fine art, and call it by various names
Now agriculture affords the newest field for
their enterprise. Men who scarcely If ever
did an honest days work, set themselves up as
teachers to teach the farmers farming. This
reminds us of the son OF the celebrated DR..
Primrose, who embarked to Holland to teach
the Dutch, English, without rejecting that it
was necessary that they should first teach him
Dutch. Put one of these garrulous takers or
verbose writer's on 100 acre farm, and without
aid he would starve to death. But they insist
we must be instructed, and at the expense of
the State; that we must have great book
printed annually, and as much oftener as pos
sible, with large pictures of sheep and bulls,
and big apples and pears and "sch," and get
ourselves informed.
Some years ago man made some money on
ten acres and after that he published book
to show how much he made and to prove that
ten acres was enough land for other farmers.
But in reading his book we discover that he
made his money in selling blackberry bushes
and roots, rather than in the sale of blackber
ries, emitting to tell us how much he humbug-
ged his customers. Many such men make
money in writing instructions which, if reduc-
ed to practice, would only ruin the farmer.
Some % or 80 years ago the Legislature of
Maine proposed to legislate for the farmers
special benefit, and enacted law to pay them
q bounty Of few cents for every bushel of
corn raised, and previous Legislature had
given bounty of three cents on every crows
head. This kind of legislation fell into disre-
pute almost Immediately. We have now to
say to the politicians who still persist in help
ing us at the expense of the Treasury, that we
do not want this kind of help. 1t costs us too
much. What we demand is the curtailing Of
expenditures, honest legislation and little of it
the abolition of all useless offices, the reduction
of salaries to an equitable compensation, which
will put an end to much office seeking, and the
encouragement of every branch of manufac-
turing and all kinds of Mechanical industry
the only means of affording steady market
for our produce. Give us this kind of legisla-
ton and agriculture will prosper we venture
to say, to an extent hitherto unattaiLed. Then
if the Legislature should come together only
once in two years, so as not to legislate us to
death, or change our laws too often, Maine
would become a great State. Beggars and
thieves might be converted to workers, the poor
improve their condition, and the rich multiply.
Practical FARMER.