The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-08-21
THE DIFFERENCE.
British and American Farming InteIIi-
gently Contrasted.


gently Contrasted.
An Englishman, some time in this
country, writing home to the Aars
Lane Iondon) Express. uses this ex-
pressive sentence: The American
farmer owns his land and has no rent
day to compel him to keep no stock
that does not pay. Tho most improve
dent can get a living" Undoubtedly
one who has a personal acquaintance
with the agricultural methods of both
countries can point out some striking
contrasts. These. in the main, are the
natural outgrowth of the different con-
ditions to which the agricultural
classes have been subjected.
The English farmer, burdened with
taxes to an extent which would make
American farmers vince" if they were
called upon to contribute at an equal
rate for the support of public burdens,
is compelled to pay in addition a rent
for the land equal to one-fourth to one
half the price the land itself would
bring in many well-settled portions of
this country; and he has to make it out
of the land, and if he can not do that
he sinks at once to the level of COM
mon laborer. He is compelled, there
fore, to ascertain and adopt such
means as will bring the land into the
very highest production, studying
closely the peculiarities of the farm as
to its adaptability and the adaptability
of the various portions of it to different
crops. Then, when the most has been
made from the land in this direction,
an equal vigilance and intelligence is
enforced in the other, Of making the
most out of the products which have
been secured. And long experience
has demonstrated that under the neces-
sites thus imposed live stock becomes
the main reliance of the farmer, with
out which he would quickly go to the
wall. He can not devote his whole
land to grain, because that would
exhaust it, and the root crops
which he can grow to advantage
in the intervals would be praeti-
cally valueless for animal food
if there were no supplies of more con-
centrated food to use with them. Live
stock therefore enables the farmer to
purchase concentrated feeding stuffs in
the market to use with his abundant
root crops, Transforming them into a
valuable marketable product, and at the
same time providing large quantities OF
manure with which to maintain the fer
tility of the soil; but the farmer must
have returned the money he pays for his
feeding stuffs and he has to have the
value of his turnips, and is quick to see
that an animal which will not bring
this money is maintained at loss; and
he can not afford to keep an animal
simply to make manure to put on the
land and raise another crop to make
more manure. This will not answer the
purpose at all. The rent has to be paid
either out of the land or out of the
pocket, and actual profit must be real
lied and actual money coming. So the
English farmer, no matter what his de-
gree of intelligence, education or enter
prise, was long ago compelled to OBJ
serve that there was great difference
in the capacity of certain breeds Of
stock to pay back with added profit the
money they receive in home grown and
foreign-purchased feeding sTufs; and
he was likewise compelled by his neces-
sites to have the best, and to GaDrove
on that If he could. No two and-two-
make-three way of figuring would keep
him out of the poorhouse, but he had to
set it down that two and two equal five
and make 1t. Handicapped by this rent
burden, compelled by necessity to make
the very utmost from the farm, the
British farmer has improved the OK
from four hundred-weight at four years
old to twelve hundred-weight at two,
and given the world the splendid races
] re y.