The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-11-23

Can He Made to Pay.
 Robinson S. Hinman, who owns a
 Housatonic river in Oxford, writes the
 productive farm on the banks of the
 Housatonic rivver in Oxford, writes the
 following letter to the Hartford "Cou-
 rant"
 Within the past few weeks the press
 of this state has contained articles
 based on the frightful necessity of some
 heroic measures being taken to put a
 stop to the desertion of New England
 land owners from the land that it is
 their bounden duty to till. Among
 other interesting news items that have
 gone the rounds is one that the IT. S.
 Commissioner of Agriculture is coming
 to New England with the idea that a
 little nitrogen, potash and phosphoric
 acid would reclaim the abandoned
 farms of New England. We have talk
 ed the decay of agriculture in New
 England as entrusted with the im-
 mense growth of our manufacturing
 and commercial interests until we have
 come to think that we are in a bad
 way, but as fact we have no aban-
 doned farms and very few, that are de-
 creasing in productiveness and conse-
 quent value. There are lands like the
 Wallngford plains that, being easily
 titled, have been cropped until weeds
 sufficient to protect the light soil from
 the wind would not grow, and sand
 blows and desertion followed.
 It is misfortune to Connecticut that the miserable skintlints that took the last bushel of rye such lands would grow did not desert little sooner and give nature chance to recuperate. Land that has been so reduced in fer tility in Connecticut is hardly worth mentioning in comparison with the ap- palling loss that is going on west of us. As president of the Farmers National congress held in Boston, few weeks ago. ex-Governor Hoard, of Wisconsin, quoted, but did not vouch for the state ment, that the decline in farm values in the state of New York in the past thirty years was billion dollars, and be made the statement that the same condition applied to farming lands from Indiana to the Atlantic coast. Had Governor Hoard made his bounds from New York to the Rocky Noun tains he would have been nearer cor rect. There are vastly more acres of land in Wisconsin that have been titled while the crop paid and then given up than there are in Connecticut, and # is years since public attention was called to the fact that companies were taking up great tracts of land west of the Mississippi through their employees wood shanties, and, by the use of ma chinery grew wheat for sale east burned the straw, and in ten years time ruined land enough for score of \ farms and moved on. It is this im- mense waste of our national resources that the national government should give it's attention to. The loss in New England is in comparison not even as drop in the bucket. We have land that was titled fifty years og. that is not titled now, for most excellent reason. There is sample of it on my own farm. Two men now living have told me of planting a rocky hillside with corn on shares, half century ago, when the farm was owned by an uncle | of mine, that could not get any one to plant if I gave him all the crop, The land is just as good--better, in fact, | as it hasn't been titled in half a century but fifty cents per day and board | yourself was wages then.
 E Living on the same farm I am pay | ing nearly three times the wages that | my uncle did, half century ago, and | my living expenses are greater in pro- portion. I must get three times as | much for the labor performed as he did | to live. He could put an $S per month | man to cutting brush and clearing | stones off an acre of land that was worth but $S at the end of a months work, while I must let that land grow i wood and timber. I don unnecessarily | abandon it, for few hundred dollars worth of ties or timber cut during the winter months goes just as far as the same amount received for titled crops.
 The amount of New England land ruined by tillage is, as I have said, small, and the rough land will never oe titled again until we have the Kan sas Populist farmers idea of good fines: When you can hire men by he day for fifty cents" We have one other class of land that is to a cer- ain extent neglected.
 The low price at which cattle and beef have been shipped from the west n past years has checked the raising lnd fatting of cattle by our farmers, md the village and borough dog has uined the sheep industry For the alter there seems to be no help. The log owners outnumber the sheep own IFS a hundred to one, and so long as ,otes count the general assembly of will overlook few million tollars loss to the state on account of lnpastured hillsides.
 Unless our western friends mend their vays men are living that will see Con- Iecticut grown and fatted beef in our markets
 The eastern farmer has the best mar .et in the world at his door, every iu- entive for maintaining and increasing he fertility of his farm and every ad- antage for doing so.
 When, every year, I read i'll western sricultural papers of the fearful
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