The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1870-01-21

Jhc aeyarirtta Sullrual.
MARIETTA, GEORGIA.
Friday Morning Jan. ga. 40.
EXTRACT FROM THE ADDRESS OF
GEN. HORACE CAPRoN AT THE
MACON STATE FAIR 1869.


MACON STATE FAIR, 1869.
ut is with pleasure that l have re-
sponded to your kind invitation, which
| have accepted in the spirit in which
it was tendered-a spirit of mutual con-
cession, sympathy, and encouragement.
This pleasure is enhanced by a knowl-
edge of the great resources of your State
"a soil rich in all the elements of fer
tility, and suited in its variety to the en-
tire circle of the productions of the farm,
orchard, and garden; phosphates, and
marls, in many localities, to repair the
waste of continued cropping, and min
erals useful in the arts water power
enough to manufacture all the cotton
grown in the State, and the implements
of agriculture and of other industries;
and climate in which the cereals and
fruits of temperate zones may flourish
side by side with scmi-tropical forms of
vegetation, and in which man may ex-
ercise, in highest health and vigor, all
his mental and physical energies in sub
DUNG nature, charging production, in
creasing wealth, and enhancing human
happiness.
With such resources at your command
with active invention to plan, and an
indomitabe will to work, who can set q
limit to the career of activity and enter
prise upon which you have entered? |
have cone among you with some knowl-
edge of these natural advantages, and
with full appreciation of the laudable
ambition that impels you, to speak a
word of encouragement, to present the
alurements of new hopes and new aims,
and ask that, extirpatins ancient preju-
dices, forgetting the things which are
behind, you press forward to those which
are before, aiming to advance the unit
ed interest and brighten the consolidated
glory of great and growing nation.
The change in your labor system in
wolves a radical change in the manner
and appliances of cultivation, necessi-
ty which many of you fully realize and
thoroughly understand. Free labor, to
be most efficient, must be educated labor
in a certain degree, skilled labor; it
must be supported and supplemented by
improved machinery, so that every dol
lar expended in the exercise of human
muscles may become taco by the magical
augmentation of rural mechanism. 1t is
thus that our lands must be cultivated
and crops grown, in part by Jrawn, in
part by brains.
This change in labor also involves the
necessity for smaller farms, better cul-
ture, the use of manurcs, rotation in
crops, and larger aCorking capltat in
proportion to permanent investments.
Broad acres of impoverished soil,
without abundant means for needed fer
tilizcrs and fixtures, machinery, and
farm animals are not only non-pro-
ductive, but absolute sources of cost and
discouragement-a milestone upon the
neck of enterprise. Without working
capital at least equal to that invested in
land, recuperation must be tedious and
the profits of farming small with its
aid in utilizing the labor at command,
that which is more efficient and intelil-
gent will naturally flow in.
The result will be a rapid develop
mcnt, higher condition of fertility,
larger crops, valuable and crcditable i'm
provcments, good neighborhood, roads
larger profits, wealth, comfort and con
| tentment.
rs natural sequence TO this system
of industry, variety in production will
take the place of an unccasing culture
of cotton and corn. The broad capabil-
tiles of soil and climate will have free
scope and exercise, and while the pro-
duct of cotton will be greater than now,
there will be corn enough for man and
beast, an abundance of beef, pork, and
mutton the finest of vegetables, and
rarest of fruits, not alone for home con-
sumption, but for the supply of less ia
vored regions. Sugar, in favoring soils,
may take the place of cotton as an ex-
port crop sorghum may yield its sweets
for local use of dwellers among the hills;
a multitude of new and profitable crops
may swell by millions the grand aggre-
gate of the cash receipts of agricultural
labor. Ramie, introduced, in 1855, in
the Botanic Garden at Washington, and
propagatcd for years in the experiment
al garden of the Department of Agricul-
ture, promises to vie with cotton in
profit and usefulness, if the manufac-
turers succeed in improving and cheap
ening its fabrication, and thus create a
great and permanent market for tho
new fiber, which can be produced in un-
limited quantities at reasonable rates.
You have also an Unreasonable source
of wealth in the cultivation of fruits
Even that most valuable of all domestic
fruits, the apple. can be produced here
in the highest perfection. 1t is true that
failures have resulted from introducing
varieties of northern origin, but your
pomologists have collected native vari--
cites fully equal in flavor and keeping