Part 2

The consumption and use of the necessaries and conveniences of life, by 10,000,000 of people, and the demands for the materials of domestic manufactures, cannot fail to afford to every quarter of our Union the means of substantial enjoyment. _Industry_ must take the place of hazardous _Speculation_, and _Frugality_ must succeed _Extravagance_. We shall then be taught to live within our means, and this will easily be accomplished, when we have only real wants, and not those which are, for the most part, artificial and fanciful. We must "eat our bread in the sweat of our faces," and we shall find it the sweetest and most nutritive of any food we have heretofore enjoyed. It may not be accompanied by luxurious and expensive viands; but its associates will be health, peace of mind, and corporeal vigour, ensuring exemplary life and purity of morals.

The foundation of the public prosperity is undoubtedly agriculture. This brings forth all the materials about which other branches of labour are, for the most part, employed, and sustains the workers in every department of the mechanic arts, in their labours. Without it, the earth would be a howling desert: with it, the cultivated world is an artificial Paradise, produced by the labour of Man, who, being doomed to "eat his bread in the sweat of his face," thus fulfils the decrees of Heaven, while he ensures to himself and his race the blessings of plenty, innocence and health. To what a high destiny, then, is the farmer appointed, when to him is committed the art on which the subsistence of his fellow men necessarily depends. His responsibilities are great indeed; and shall he rely only on his individual efforts and limited experience, for the fulfilment of such important duties? No: he should call to his aid the experience, the intelligence, and the scientific as well as practical knowledge, which associations for promoting agriculture are universally found to afford, and thereby add to his own, the experience of those with whom he is associated, and, by joint efforts, produce results to which any one individual is incompetent. The practices, good or bad, which are handed down by his predecessors, are repeated; and little progress is made in improvement by isolated or self-confident individuals.

It would be a toilsome task, nor indeed would my limited information enable me, to enumerate all the discoveries and improvements in husbandry which modern times have developed. I will mention one or two of the most prominent. There have been but few articles used among our farmers, for the most essential of all requisites, _manuring their lands_. _Dung_, which can be produced only in quantities inadequate to the demand for it, has been the universal and main reliance, _Lime_ is also generally esteemed of primary importance. Both of these are estimable, without dispute; and yet it is now well known in Europe, and begins to be so here, that _the ashes of burnt clay_ constitute a manure which is superiour to them all, for every purpose to which they have been applied. Clay is found every where in immense quantities, and can be cheaply converted into ashes, and whole farms may be rapidly fertilized in place of partial and protracted applications of more expensive and less attainable manures; it is fortunately best adapted for strong and clay soils, which thus afford renovations of their surfaces out of their own bowels. This account of so valuable an addition to our stock of manure, obtained from a material of little estimation, walked over every day, and heedlessly neglected, will not, perhaps, be believed by the generality of our farmers; and yet the most celebrated agriculturists in England, Scotland, and Ireland are so convinced of the fact, from actual experience, that it is maintained to be "the most important discovery in agriculture which modern times have produced."

The application of salt to our fields as manure, is now under very extensive experiment. There is no doubt of its efficacy: but it requires experience, as to quantity per acre, and the kinds of soil the most suitable. This is not a new discovery; for its application to _land as manure_ has been known before, and at the time of, our blessed Saviour's appearance upon earth. In St. Luke's Gospel[1] it is said, "_salt_ is good; but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither _fit for the land_ nor _yet for the dunghill_; but men cast it out." Its uses, both for cattle and manure, can be traced through the writings of the most eminent among the _Romans_, down to the most celebrated chymists and agriculturists of our own day. Where are our farmers to learn such facts and discoveries? Not of themselves; for there are many who do not read, and few go out of their way to try experiments. They can only be taught by agricultural associations, wherein the experience of practical farmers, the information derived from books, and the assistance of scientific characters, are happily combined.

[1] Chap. xiv. 34, 35.

The spirit for agricultural improvement, and the formation of societies, has very much spread throughout the Union. Shall Pennsylvania be behind her sister states in such associations? She is before them in many practical proofs of her good husbandry; but has yet much to learn. Let us then promptly obey the call of our legislature, and begin the great work by forming societies and rendering them efficient. Let us pride ourselves in our household manufactures; and for this purpose let us invite the female branches of our families to join in our plan. _Without their aid_, we can do nothing in such manufactures; _with it_, everything. Instead of foreign gewgaws and expensive finery, we may be independent in articles for household uses and our attire, and save the expenditures which now go into the pockets of foreigners. Commerce is certainly essential to an agricultural country; but the extent of it should be no greater than our products will reach: when the balance turns against us, our prosperity declines.

You know, gentlemen, that our farmers will be satisfied only by actual observations of practical proofs. We must have public manifestations of improvement. The institution of cattle-shows should be promoted. They would be useful as places of sale, or for the exhibition of the best breeds, or for exposing for imitation or sale the best and greatest variety of household manufacture. On these occasions, premiums, more honorary than costly, should be distributed to successful candidates, either for such cattle or manufactures, or for agricultural discoveries or improvements, or the best execution of known practices. Emulation must be roused and encouraged, and the honourable pride of excelling must be fostered. Such public exhibitions must be conducted by discreet and reputable men.

Under such guidance and with suitable accompaniments of innocent pleasure and amusement, they will make a much stronger impression than any oral addresses or written communications. By these exhibitions, the emulation, excited in some neighbouring states has improved their agriculture and increased their manufactures to a degree almost incredible. Agricultural societies are extending to every quarter of the Union. Until very lately, there did not exist one to the southward of Pennsylvania, and she had but two, _to wit_, the Philadelphia Society, which has long continued its useful labours and eminent zeal; and that of Blockley and Merior, in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia. In the Eastern States, they are numerous; and in New York, forty or fifty are recently formed and are making successful progress.

I shall not enlarge further upon these topics, but will dismiss you with the expression of a hope that you may be governed in all your deliberations by the pure principles of justice; that by preserving your minds entirely free from hate, from friendship, from anger, and from pity, they may be directed to such conclusions as may best effectuate the great purposes for which you are assembled, and that in clearing the innocent from unjust suspicion, and dragging the guilty to deserved punishment, you may promote the best interests of society, and secure the freedom and happiness of its individual members.

LETTERS ON AGRICULTURE.

(Concluded from last Number.)

Though the cultivation of land by metayers may be unfavourable to its amelioration, still it may be easily imagined, that the smaller products of every little farm will be greater, as each must possess both a garden and a poultry yard. Every field in Lombardy is encircled with a band of poplars, mulberries, oaks, &c., and they are often so thick that the eye can scarcely penetrate the rich growth of leaves. From the boughs, luxuriant vines hang in festoons, and present to the passing traveller a scene of rural beauty and enjoyment which he may search for in vain in other countries. The shade of the trees does not injure the crops, such is the invigorating effect of a humid soil and an Italian sky.

Of the constant succession of crops we here know very little; indeed it is the result of experience alone. So much depends on climate, that we imagine the rotation practised elsewhere can never afford certain information to us. The largest quantity of the most valuable product, which may be taken from a spot of ground in any number of years, is a problem whose solution is of the greatest importance. In Piedmont the rotation is generally as follow:

1st year, Indian corn, manured, Beans--hemp.

2d year, Wheat.

3d year, Clover, turned up after the first cutting and fallowed by a fallow.

4th year, Wheat.

This rotation, says M. de Chateauvieux, is one of the most abundant, and may be pursued indefinitely, notwithstanding the recurrence of wheat, though perhaps the result may be atributed to the abundance of manure furnished by a meadow cut three times. After stating that a farm of sixty arpents supported a family of eight or nine persons, who kept twenty-two head of large cattle, of which two oxen and a cow are fattened every year, as well as one or two hogs, that it gave about one hundred and twenty-five dollars worth of silk, and furnished more wine than could be consumed, that the preparatory crop of Indian corn and beans almost subsisted the metayers, and that nearly all the grain might be sold, as well as a great quantity of smaller products, he celebrates the industry and management of the Piedmontese proprietors in the following terms: 'It will be easy for you, after this, to conceive how Piedmont is perhaps, of all countries, that where the economy and management of land is best understood, and the phenomenon of its great population and immense exportation of produce will thus be explained.'

In the neighbourhood of Placenza, cattle rather than grain constitute the wealth of the farmer. The cows and oxen are distinguished by immense horns and beautiful figures, and we believe that our American race is in no way to be compared with them.--Their origin is said to be Hungarian; the males are noble animals, but the cows give little milk. To remedy this inconvenience, two thousand cows are imported from Switzerland, and the valuable qualities of the animal are thus perpetuated. The cattle are almost universally of a slate-grey colour. The rotation of crops is here as follows:

1st year, Indian corn and hemp, manured.

2d year, Wheat.

3d year, Winter beans.

4th year, Wheat, manured.

5th year, Clover, ploughed after the first cutting.

6th year, Wheat.

This succession, however, can only be pursued in a rich soil, which is manured every three years. There is one article we beg leave to notice particularly. We imagine that the winter bean might easily be introduced among us, and with great advantage, as it is capable of supporting the cold of the severest winter. It is sown in the beginning of September, and it must have considerable growth before autumn to resist the attacks of the cold. The stalk then perishes by the frost, but at the moment the genial warmth of the spring is felt, two or three new stalks arise, which bloom in the month of May, and the beans are fit to gather at the end of July. The management of this important vegetable we give in the words of the author. 'La culture est extrêmement simple; aprés a récolte du blé fumé, on retourne la terre par un seul labour et on la laisse émietter par l'influence de la saison. Aux premiers jours de Septembre on séme les féves, soit en les enterrant á la charrue, soit en les recoverant á la herse, soit enfin avec le semoire, qui les place par rangées, de manière à pouvoir au printemps les sarcler avec la houe à cheval. Si on ne suit pas cette dernière méthode, il faut les sarcler à la main, dans le courant d'avril.' The culture of the winter bean is suited to argillaceous soils, and while it allows the proper intervals between ploughing the ground and sowing wheat which succeeds, it is admirably calculated to maintain the fertility of the ground.

The plains which border on the Po, in the vicinity of Parma and Lodi, support those fine animals, whose milk is converted into the celebrated Parmesan cheese. The grass is here far more valuable than any crop of grain. In the summer the cows are housed and fed with the green grass of the first and second mowings: that of the third is converted into hay. At the end of autumn the cows are allowed to pick up whatever may be left in the fields. These meadows are perhaps the most fertile on earth; they are generally mowed four times a year. The cheese is here never made from less than fifty cows, and as the farms are small, there is one common establishment, to which the milk is brought twice during the day; an account of it is kept by the cheesemaker and settled in cheese every six months. The same plan has been introduced in Switzerland.

In the Milanese, the farms are larger than in other parts of Italy, because the culture of the grasses demands less care and labour than other branches of farming, and fewer advances. Irrigation is here carried to such an extent, that every two or three arpents can be inundated by its own canal. The good quality of the grass, however, in time becomes deteriorated, other plants gradually spring up in the place of the grasses; the sluices are then closed, and the ground is ploughed for hemp; after which, and a crop of legumes, oats, and wheat, it is again laid down in grass. A meadow will generally last fifteen years, and the course of harvests returns every five. M. de Chateauvieux gives the following remarkable outline:

1st year, Hemp, followed by legumes.

2d year, Oats.

3d year, Wheat, followed by legumes.

4th year, Indian corn.

5th year, Wheat.

15th year, Natural meadow, dunged every 3 years, and mowed 4 times a year. -- -- 20 years 67 -- --

Of these sixty-seven crops from the same ground there are sixty-one for the use of animals, five for the sustenance of man, and only one for his clothing. There is, perhaps, no country on the face of the earth which can boast such a proportion of agricultural products. To obtain this result, the ground is manured, very profusely however, five times in twenty years, and it is a singular fact that this manure is applied always to the grass and never to the grain.

The culture of rice occupies a part of Italy, and is a source of great profit to the owner of the soil. The difficulties in its cultivation are so trifling, that, contrary to the usual custom, the ground is let out at a fixed rent of one hundred and sixty francs the arpent; three crops are received every five years. As with us, these rice grounds are most unhealthy, and the stagnant water which covers them produces disease in all the surrounding country. The unfortunate peasant rarely escapes its deleterious effect, and the government, sensible of this constant draft on human life, have prohibited the further extension of the culture of this grain.

One of the most singular features in the physical character of Italy, is the constant elevation of the beds of rivers, particularly the Arno and the Po, by means of depositions of earth and stones, brought down by the heavy rains from the mountains.--This had become so alarming, that the raising of dykes yielded to a very ingenious operation called _Colmata_, by which the water of the river was allowed to overflow a certain space, and this very deposition, about three or four inches in a year, made to raise the level of the adjacent shores. But this process, which is fully described by Sismondi, must necessarily have a limit. Embankments are resorted to, and in some places the bed of the Po is absolutely thirty feet above the level country. The Po even now frequently overflows and devastates its banks; the inhabitants, provided always for the calamity which unfortunately is not unfrequent, take to their boats and wait till the inundation has subsided. There would seem to be little doubt that at some day not far distant, the whole delta of the Po, or _Polesino_, as it is called, will become one wide and wretched marsh. Even now the roads are often impassable. Ferara, consecrated by the genius of Ariosto and Tasso, will be extinguished, and Revenna, already fallen from its high honours, be known only as the deserted capital of a potentate of the lower empire.

M. de Chateauvieux, climbing the mountains which separate Tuscany from Modena, and leaving behind him the fertile plains of Lombardy, entered those lofty regions, where the earth does not produce sufficient sustenance for the inhabitants, who are employed with their flocks of goats and sheep, in constantly traversing the mountains in a manner somewhat similar to that of the Spanish shepherds. The author employs himself in describing the scenery of the Corniche, and though it is perhaps among the finest in Europe, and he might have felt all its changeful beauty and sublimity, still we think he is far more fortunate in his delineations of rural economy.

The agriculture of Tuscany has been so fully and ably investigated by Sismondi,[2] that little was left to M. de Chateauvieux. The valley of the Arno, in truth the only fertile part of the dukedom, (for the rest is composed of precipitous mountains, or that silent and hideous district the Maremma) stretches from Cortona to Pisa, and forms about one-sixth of its whole territory. The farms are very small, being from three to six arpents, so that one pair of oxen supplies the necessities of ten or twelve metayers, in the working of their little plat of ground. They manifest, however, their extravagance in maintaining a horse, which may transport their produce to market, and their wives and daughters to mass or a rustic ball.--The most general rotation of crops is here:

1st year, Indian corn, beans, peas, or other legumes dunged.

2d year, Wheat.

3d year, Winter beans.

4th year, Wheat.

5th year, Clover, sown after the wheat, cut in the spring and followed by _sorgho_.

[2] Tableau de l'agriculture Toscane, par J. C. L. Sismondi.

This _sorgho_ is a sort of parsnip, which is reduced into flour, of which they make a bad soup and a poor polente. The ground is manured only once in five years, a circumstance which abundantly proves the richness of this deep alluvial soil. Notwithstanding all this fertility and a cultivation which resembles rather that of a garden, than a farm, the country does not produce enough to resist the effects of a bad year. The metayers live with the greatest economy, and though their cottages are built with a taste which seems indigenous to the country, the interior exhibits a total absence of all the conveniences of life, and supplies but a frugal subsistence. Such is the view which M. de Chateauvieux has taken. But in our opinion the peasantry of Tuscany under all circumstances, are not only more neat in their persons, but better clothed, and apparently enjoying more happiness, than that of any other district in Italy. There can be little doubt, that all this distress and privation arises from the system of the metayers; a system which, deriving its existence from the feudal state, is equally to be deprecated, whether we consider the political character of the community or the individual happiness of its members. The man who has no other possession than his industry, and who cannot hope to change his situation, can never have such a stake in the state, as to render him either an intelligent or valuable member of it. On the other hand, the metayer, bound to furnish half the seed and to divide and sell the produce, pretty generally consumes one year the fruits of the last; or if there be a surplus, how is it to be invested? There would seem to be no other mode, than in the sticks which he is bound to supply, for the support of the vines, for the landlord provides the stock and repairs the house. He then can only lay up his money in his chest, or spend it on his pleasures. Thus the end of a year finds him no better off than at its commencement, for want of such an interest in the soil, as would secure him from the effects of his negligence and indifference in its cultivation.

Before leaving this part of Italy, we ought to mention a subject which is of some little importance; the manufacture of straw hats, which has just commenced in our country. It is doubtless a most profitable exertion of industry. The raw material costs nothing, and M. de Chateauvieux informs us that this branch annually amounts to three millions (we presume) of francs. The straw is of beardless wheat, cut before it is ripe, and whose vegetation has been thinned (étiolée) by the sterility of the soil. This soil is chosen among calcareous hills; it is never manured, and the grain is sown very thick. The women who are employed in making the Leghorn hats, earn from about thirty to forty cents per day, no trifling sum in Italy.

The Maremma or country of the Malaria forms the third district, extending from Leghorn to Terracina, and from the sea to the mountains, and having a width of twenty-five or thirty miles. M. de Chateauvieux speaks of this singular country in the following terms: 'Le ciel reste également pur, la verdure aussi fraiche, l'air aussi calme; la sérénité de cet aspect semble devoir inspirer une entiére confiance, et je ne saurais cependant vous exprimer l' espèce d'effroi que l'on éprauve malgré soi en respirant cet air à la fois si suave et si funeste.' A country so very singular in its character would necessarily require a very peculiar system of management. Our author developes this system in a visit he made to a domain called Campo Morto, in the most deserted part of the Maremma. Here was a Faltore, charged with the administration of the farm. The whole Maremma of Rome is in the hands of eighty proprietors, who are called mercanti de' tenuti, and reside as well as their Fattori in the city.--On this farm there were four hundred horses, of which, one hundred were broken; two thousand hogs, which ran in the woods and fed on the acorns; some hundreds of cows, who give no other revenue than the sale of the calves, which is estimated at about eight dollars each cow; one hundred oxen used to the plough, and about four thousand sheep. The rent of this farm was about eighteen francs the arpent of cultivated land, amounting in all to about $22,000. The annual profit was about $5000, besides interest at five per cent. on the capital of the flocks.