American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

AMERICAN A GRICULTURE.
:82d meridian. In I86o it was the 85th; in I870, the 88th; in
i88o, the 89th.
Meanwhile what becomes of the regions over which this
shadow of partial exhaustion passes, like an eclipse, in its westward movement? The answer is to be read in the condition of
New England to-day. A part of the agricultural population is
maintained in raising upon limited soils the smaller crops, garden vegetables and orchard fruits, and producing butter, milk,
poultry, and eggs for the supply of the cities and manufacturing
towns which had their origin in the flourishing days of agriculture,
which have grown with the age of the communities in which
they were planted, and which, having been well founded when
the decadence of agriculture begins, flourish the more on this
account, inasmuch as a second part of the agricultural population, not choosing to follow the westward movement of the
grain culture, are ready with their rising sons and daughters to
enter the mill and factory.
Still another part of the agricultural population gradually
becomes occupied in the higher and more careful culture of the
cereal crops on the better portion of the former breadth of arable
land, the less eligible fields being allowed to spring up in brush
and wood; deeper ploughing and better drainage are resorted
to; fertilizers are now employed to bring up and to keep up the
pristine fertility of the soil.
And thus begins the serious systematic agriculture of an old
State. Something is done in wheat, but not much. New York
raised thirteen million bushels in I850; thirty years later, when
her population had increased seventy per cent, she raises thirteen million bushels. Pennsylvania raised fifteen and a half
million bushels in I85o, with a population of two and a quarter
millions; in I88o, with four and a half million inhabitants, she
raises nineteen and a half million bushels. New Jersey raised
i,6oo,ooo bushels then; she raises 1,9oo00,000ooo now.
More is done in corn, that magnificent and most prolific
cereal; more still in buckwheat, barley, oats, and rye. Penn
sylvania, tho the tenth State in wheat production, stands first
of all the Union in rye, second in buckwheat, and third in oats;
New York, the same New York whose Mohawk and Genesee
valleys were a proverb through the world forty years ago, is but
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