Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-01-24
THE FARMING INDUSTRY.
Cause of the Decay of the Agricultural
Industry East and West.


from the Youths Companion
Some melancholy views of the state of
agriculture in the United States have late
ly been put forth by a Convention of farm
ers representing several State, held in St.
Louis.
At the same time that the authorities
of certain of the Eastern States hay-
ing agricultural matters in their de-
partments are lamenting that the
competition of the West is max
ing farming Improbable in the East,
and that the more brilliant prospects of
agriculture in the West are causing farm
ers to desert their homes and leave the
land to grow up to forest, the farmers of
the Central Western States meet and re-
solve that agriculture is a decaying in
dustry."
Still further west, on the pains of Kan
sas, Nebraska and Dakota, very many
farmers are sunk deeply in debt, and are
often bankrupted, not because they can not
raise enough from their farms to live on,
but because drought or some other calam
ity makes it impossible for them to pay the
heavy interest upon the mortgage on their
| land
The condition of things either East or
West, which is correctly represented by such
| unfavorable reports, is exceptionally rather
than universal. In the East, and even in
the most unproductive sections of the
New England States there are many pros
porous farmers, and the West, even in the
portions from which most complaints of
debt and improbable production come, re-
mains the garden of the world.
Why, then, should we be told that agri-
culture is dead in the East and dying in
the West?
A foreign authority who has studied the
matter. says that the want of prosperity
complained of in our agriculture is due to
the effects of long continued want of thor
oughness.
1.-THE ruin of those who have been
ruined" says this authority, "comes from
carelessness, Ignorance, improvidence and
disorder. They find in the West the land
new and fertile; they exhaust it by tilling
it without improving it, without enriching
| it, without varying the crops.
"They take away more than they give
| back, until the land ceases to yield them
good crops, and then they borrow money
at heavy rates of interest. The usury eats
up what they have left, and when the
creditor comes down upon them they
move on TO the far West, take another
homestead and begin over again"
Even in the East there are few farmers
| who cultivate their farms with complete
thoroughness, allowing no source of wealth,
however small, to go to waste. Yet thor
ough farmers are always found to be the
prosperous ones.
Our agriculture has a lesson of minute
thoroughness to learn from the old world
before it can be profitable in the very high
| degree of which it is capable. This lesson
it may have to learn through the adver-
sitv of such Of its followers as forget the
saying of Franklin that always taking out
of the meal-tub and never putting in soon
comes to the bottom"
Perhaps our agriculture is not the only
American industry which has this lesson
| to learn Certainly "push" and enterprise
are desirable qualities. To them, as well
as to the native wealth of our resources
is due great share of our wonderful ma
tional prosperity But in contest be-
tween enterprise and thoroughness, it is
thrift that wins.
Thoroughness is only another name for
careful and intelligent attention to detail,
clear through to the end, in whatever bust
ness we undertake. 1t is perhaps as often
the foundation of success as dash and en-
terprise.
Many branches of American manufact-
ures have succeeded much more distinctly
by reason of their thoroughness of meth
DDS than on account of any quality of dash
or audacity that has entered into them.
Success in manufacture, indeed, ulti-
mately depends on the thorough merit of
goods produced. With the development
of the country, carrying with it the oc-
cupation of all productive land and the
filling up of avenues of trade, the key to
success in agriculture and business is also
sure to be found in that one word, ''thor-
ouphpecsD