Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-01-27


Office of Publication, 123-l25 West Second
street. Los Angeles Telephone No. 156
MONDAY. JsNOARY CIV 1890.
Town and CounsFy.
The tendency of modern conditions is
to the increase of population in cities
and relatively, to the decrease of popu-
lation in the agricultural districts. 1t
does not follow that because population
is becoming sparser in the country that
there is any deterioration in the amount
of the products of the soil, for the con-
trary is the case. The reason is easy to
find. In these days of improved agri-
cultural machinery the necessity for
manual labor on the farm is not nearly
90 great as it formerly was. Forty or
fifty years ago, when everything on
farm was done by hand,
there was work for ten, yes,
twenty men where ono is now required.
Indeed, it will not be long before the old
fashioned farm, which was the nursery
of nearly all our notable public men of
the past age, will no longer exist. We
have seen that the New England farm,
with which 80 many sndearing sssocis-
tions are connected, is rapidly passing
away. In Vermont recently whose dis
tricts have been offered for taxes, and
bought in by the State. In some parts
of New York, farms that had foarished
for over a hundred years have beer
utterly abandoned and cannot be sold.
All through the Eastern States farming
land can be bought cheaper than the
cheapest land in the West. Villages that
depended upon the trade of the sur
rounding farmers are depopuleted, and
have become types of Goldsmith 8
sweet Auburn. The great agricultural
industry of the country has gone, like
Greeiey's young man, West, where
farming is carried on upon go gigantic a
scale with improved machinery that the
small farner of.the East finds himself in
the position of the Moor, with his occu-
patton gone. The only resource left for
the Eastern farmer, who is near enough
to city to market his own products,
is to raise chickens, garden truck,
and do some dairying in q
smell way. He cannot give employ
ment to anybody, for there is nothing he
can raise whichshe could sell ct enough
profit to enable him to pay wsges. So
that while the small farms of the East
are in state Of decadence, the great
agricultural farms, or rather ranchos, of
the West, frem which all, or nearly all
the staple products of the country come,
give relatively employment to but few
men. 1t would take forty or fifty of the
old d-fashi0ned New England farms so
form one of the great Western farmseof
the present day. Each of the former, in the
good old times would employ on an
average all the year round three or four
hands, 30 that against the one or two
hundred persons that would have found
work and wages on those forty Or fifty
New England farms, half century ago,
not one-tenth that number is now en-
ploysd regularly upon one of the great
Western farms.
Improvements in agricultural maehin-
cry end modern facilities for transporta-
tion ere doing the work of depopulsting
the country. What the agricultural dis
tricts have lost in population the cities
have gained. The ehespening of farming
by labor-saving machinery has so greatly
lowered the price of farm products THAT
tie emartSmen who were found on farms
ferty or fifty years ago are now found
engaged in, the activities CT the cities.
Itis much easier and cheaper to support
great massed populations now than it waa
q few decades ago, and the, xlassed pop
ulas,ons are working out mere profitable
industries in Ahe cities than they could
possibly find in the coantry. The ad-
vance in the arts and sciences has
opened new fields of employment and
greatly varied and diversi6ed,the chan
-nels in which tbs energies of the people
, can be sproftably engaged. Whilst ma
chinery is furnishing the staff Of life in
the country, the men it has supplanted
have gone to the cities and entered upon
successful careers as mechanics, arti-
sans, or liz some of the many avenues
that afford employment in connection
vita trade and commerce.
Yet who can be 80 lost to sentiment as
not to regret the passing away of the
old fashioned farm, with its homely ira
ditioEs, its pure and wholesome life, its
earnest work and it's healthy enjoyments,
it's Annt Marys, it's Uncle Lies and its
Cousin Jemimas2 Who can forget tho
old well and the oaken bucket-''thea
iron-bound bucket."-the cosy farm
house and the fat barn, the worm fence,
the buckwheat field, the little singing
brook and the kind-faced cattle that
browsed near it? But above all. who of
the sterner sex can forget the dear girls,
with handsome faces and healthy
bodies, that were bred into glorious
womanhood upon those old.fashioned
farms7 These are pictures that have
furnished themes for poets and painters, |