The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1880-06-24
Food as Wealth,

COOu as Vtultns
The most pressing care is to provide
for the food wants of the body, and the
labor TO satisfy these is as obligatory
under the equator as in the frozen
regions near either pole. 1t is true that
in the torrid regions the earth is so pro-
fuse in her gifts of fruit and vegetables,
and the population there is SO scanty,
that a sufficiency of food can usually be
obtained by the mere gathering; hut
this labor, though slight, cannot be
neglected, and even there, where cloth
ing is not one of the human wants, a
part of every day must nevertheless be
devoted by some member of every
family to provide food for the daily use
Of the household.
In our more rugged climate food is
still the most pressing want; and in the
temperate zone of the northern hemis-
phere, where we dwell and where the
most dense population of the globe is to
be found, the struggle for existence is but
a continual struggle for bread. Nature
| here does not endow the vegetable
world with such wealth of human food;
and the fruits which aid mans susten-
ance are not here sufficient, either in
quantity or character, to keep in good
active life the over-working minds and
| bodies of the predominant ruling races
which inhabit Europe and America.
| Man is here, by necessity, forced to till
the soil, to aid the earth by his skill.
and thus happily from her produce
enough food for himself, the cultivator,
and all those whoare dependent upon
him for their daily life.
Commerce will fill its place in the
affairs of men, manufactures have their
established position of Importance, rail
roads and ships seem to be indispen-
sable to the comfort, even to the life of
us, in cities remote from the overburdened
tieid, where the golden grain and the
homely useful roots cumber the ground
with the promise of the needed susie
nance of far-otf, unthinking millions.
Wealth is nothing but food, and the
means of growing it, excepting perhaps
in those cool climates, like ours, where
some shelter from the weather, either of
clothing or of houses, is demanded. 1t
has been written that paper money is
not wealth, neither are diamonds, al
though selling Tor millions; but that
gold ONLY is really wealth. However
opinions may vary, each of these is as
much wealth as the other, and none of
them are of any value unless some one,
not the owner, has food enough and to
spare, and is willink to exchange some
of it for some of these articles.
1t is again said, and with an apparent
show of reason, that as we may have
shipped across the ocean during the past
year three hundred million dollars
worth of farm produce, and that we
have five times that amount LETT, that
our home reserve is worth only fifteen
hundred millions. Can this be trueP
Let hungry Europe offer again to buy of
us the same quantity of grain, beef and
nnplr haun iI1st sold har. nt,1I Hua
hundred millions buy it? We think
not; and there is not enough gold,
silver and precious stones in the world
to take from us our entire annual yield
of food products. Gold may be dis
pensed with. food cannot. Gold can
never measure the value of our farm
produce, but merely regulates the value
our surplus; we will not sell our life,
nd the life OF the nation is it's food, and
he nation is the farmer.
A few hundred years ago our ances-
tors landed upon this continent, a mere
handful, and planted themselves upon
the eastern border of vast territory of
to them unknown dimensions, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and from the
frozen regions of the North to the sunny
gulf on the South, as yet untouched by
the plow or the spade. From the new
but comparatively rugged soil of the
lands they titled, they wrung their sub
sistence, little dreaming that in the then
unknown far West vast areas of the
most fertile land were waiting, and
waiting in vain for their cultivation.
Gradually as they increased in num-
bers, and as the soil became in some
measure exhausted of the elements
necessary to bountiful harvests, our
fathers moved westward, tilling the
richer ground as they moved, producing
therefrom crops OF fabulous size,. COM
pared with those now attainable in the
East. They who were left behind on
the Atlantic coast, by harder work, more
careful cultivation, as well as by the
application of large quantities of enrich
| ing material, strove manfully to pro-
duce from mother earth harvest of
equal value with those raised by the
pioneer in the great West.
By these means they were for long
while enabled to compete with them, as
the cost of bringing TO the East the
bountiful Western yield tended to equal
ize the value of an acres return in both
places. But as time rolled on and still
more had been gathered from our East
ern fields, without adequate return, and
the West was still unfolding myriads of
new fields, the contest became more
unequal. As a country we have, and no
doubt shall for many years continue to
have, a large amount of harvest of all
food products, enough and to spare, but
surely as the sun moves westward every
day can we see the time in the future
when many of our most fertile States,
now furnishing to Europe millions OF
bushels of the most nourishing grains,
will silently enroll themselves with those
who are now compelled to go down 10
Egypt to buy corn.