Year: 1877

Closing with fence Is the bapc OF Wes-
tern farming. A man buys quarter Sec
ton, and is compelled to make either one
or two miles of fence-the quantity depend
lug on the circumstance whether he "joins
fences" or not. He may wish to raise
wheat and keep no stock but he is COM
ptlled to fence just the same, to defend
himself against his neighbors' cattle. If
they have not more than fifty head, it will
be cheaper for him to go upon their farms
and enclose their pastures, than to build his
own boundary fence.


The squatter finds to his amazemeut that
his fence will cost FIVE times as much as his
land aiaN'aet less thar four hundred dollars
mile He has teams, tools, and boys suf1i-
cient to raise fifty to hundred acres of
wheat, but not having money enough to
fence it. is driven to the alternative of rent
ing of others, and letting his own rich land
lie idle. Farmers can about as we'll afford
to pay ten dollars per acre for farm, and
be obliged to fence only enough to restrain
their own stock, as to pay FIVE dollars per
acre, and be compelled to fence against the
stock of the State


Many men rent all their lives, who would
buy laud and pay for it, were it not for the
serious expense of fencing. The writer in
the Illinois Report, already quoted, says ::
About three. fourths of al the 'sussin' in
Illinois may be fairly charged to the prac-
tice of fencing crops, rather than stock
Had Illinois passed n law thirty, twenty, or
even ten years since, that stock should be
fenced, or otherwise taken care of by its
owners, do not believe there would be an
acre of good prairie uncultivatcd in the
State. l know this is strong statement
when we think how many acres of the best
land in the world are yet lying out but
those who have lived in the State but the
last ten years have seen miles of prairie
come under the plow right around then,
even under the crop fencing Incubus
During the wheat mania of a few years
since, large portion of the prairics of CEN
trail Illinois would have been turned bottom
side up, had it not been for the expense of
.feucing. We have spent mil
IfeYs of dollars in Michigan pine to keep
OUR corn and wheat from going off our
farms to prey on our neighbours hogs and
cattle p


Und,r uniform law compelling every
man to take care of his stock, and insuring
him against harm from his ncighbors, it is
certain that the population Of the Western
States would have been some millions great
or than now, while their wealth would have
proportionatc!y increased. Moreover, the
farms would have been better cultivated,
the houses better built, the barns larger and
more comfortable, and the average stock of
purer breed and higher quality. Let every
Legislature say to every settler, "Tako care
of your own stock, and we will see that
your neighbor takes care of his" and two
farms will be opened along the frontier





perversely blind to its own interest in this
matter; but it will not much longer be "the
poor mans asylum" unless it shall open its
eyes, and. by relieving him of the onerous
"fence tax" place the virgin soil within
his reach.


Injustice Of the Present .System-The
proof of the bad policy of our present sys-
tenn of fencing, has suggested, also, its in
justice. To compel A to fence against BIS
cattle, is morally and socially wrong. 1t in
verts the relation Of things 1t takes pro-
perty from a without rendering to him an
equivalent. Corn, wheat, oats, fruit trees,
vegetables, stay at home quietly, trespass.
ing on nobody, and interfering with nobody.
Shsl we put the onus of fencing on station
ary or on locomotive property? Shall we
burden with the cost of fencing the man
whoscsproperty stays where it is put, and
can not get away or on the man whose
property has legs, horns, and grinders, with
a grauiverous appetite?


The writer in the Illinois Report asks /:
''Is there any good reason why one man
should be compelled to build from one to
ten miles of fence to protect his crops from
his neighbors' stock, when such neighbors
might do it with one. tenth the fence Can
any one give me good reason why the law
should be that man shall stand guard
over his one hundred and sixty acres of
grain, rather than bis neighbor over his one
COW? Does, Or does it not, seem right that
every man shall take care of his own stock
On this hinges the whole question. My
idea is.t that every man shall take care of his