Colonies of New Englanders, allured by the early season, as compared with that of their own homes, the productive soil and the ready access to market, have settled upon and around the new railroad just opened, which leads south from Camden through the town of Malaga, where a large tract has recently been divided into farms of various sizes. They bring with them all the surroundings of an advanced civilization.
To those with no capital but their own labor and a determination to conquer success, these lands offer the highest inducements. Most of them can be had on credit, by men who will settle and improve, at twenty to thirty dollars per acre, within a little over an hour’s ride to Philadelphia. This tract is distant but a few miles from the Delaware river, and probably no better could be found. Any number of locations can be had. Many are already improved by buildings, fencing, and all the preliminary comforts which cluster round an established home. The settler may choose between the improved and the unimproved.
But there is a better country north of Camden, lining the shore of the Delaware, where any number of locations may be found, improved by buildings, and at moderate prices, as well as on favorable terms as to payment. Vast progress in improvement has been made through all this region within ten years. New towns have been built, new turnpikes constructed, while the great railroad puts the cultivator in constant connection with the two overgrown cities at its termini. Land is increasing in value as population flows in. The margin of the Delaware, from Philadelphia upward, is being lined with villages, between which new farm-houses and cottages are annually erected; and the young of this generation will live to see it a continuous settlement of substantial villas, peopled by the swarms of educated families which a great human hive like Philadelphia is annually throwing off. A location within such an atmosphere of improvement must continually increase in value. The owner will find himself growing richer from this cause, just as the trucker on the Pennsylvania side has done—not so rapidly, but quite as surely. An investment in such land, properly managed, and not permitted to deteriorate, will assuredly pay. My own little farm is an illustration; for more than once have I been solicited to sell at double the price it cost me.
I am now looking at the future, as well as at the present. Yet the apparent anomaly of there being always an abundance of land for sale in so desirable a district, must not be overlooked. But it is so throughout our country; there are always and everywhere more sellers than buyers. It is the same thing in the cities; everywhere there is somebody anxious to sell. It would seem that we either have too much land in this country, or too small a population. Time alone can produce the proper equilibrium. The land cannot be increased in quantity, but it is evident that the population will be. As this is not a treatise either upon land or farming, but the experience of a single individual, so each claimant for a similar experience must choose for himself.
But choose as he may, locate as he will, he must not, as he hopes to succeed in growing the smaller fruits to profit, locate himself out of reach of a daily cash market. New York and Philadelphia may be likened to two huge bags of gold, always filled, and ever standing open for him to thrust in his hand, provided in the other he brings something to eat. From this exhaustless fountain of wealth, whole adjacent populations have become rich. The appetite of the cities for horticultural luxuries has revolutionized the neighboring agriculture, enhanced the value of thousands of acres, infused a higher spirit into cultivators, elevated fruit-growing into a science, and started competition in a long rivalry after the best of every thing that the earth can be made to yield. All this is no spasmodic movement. It will go on for all future time; but in this grand and humanizing march after perfection in producing food for man, the careful tiller of the soil, with moderate views and thankful heart, will be sure to find Ten Acres Enough.
| Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: |
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| importation from distant countries=> importation form distant countries {pg 96} |
| fifty cents’ worths=> fifty cents’ worth {pg 215} |
| worst treatmeut=> worst treatment {pg 221} |
| Do not put on long a face=> Do not put on a long face {pg 241} |