JOHNSTON'S NOTES ON NORTH AMERICA.
Notes on North America, Agricultural, Social, and Economical. By James F. W. Johnston, M.A., F.R.SS.L. and E., &c. Two Vols. post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons.
Professor Johnston had three objects in view in his visit to the New World. His high reputation as an agricultural chemist had induced the Agricultural Society of New York to request him to give a course of lectures at Albany upon the connection of chemical and geological science with that of the cultivation of land. He had also been commissioned by the Government of New Brunswick to examine and report on the agricultural capabilities of that province. And besides these public duties, he was impelled by a strong desire to study the actual position of the art of husbandry in the fertile regions of the West, and the influence which its progress is likely to exert upon British agriculture.
Our shrewd brother Jonathan, however brilliant his achievements have been in other arts, has not hitherto earned any great reputation as a scientific farmer. Nature has been so bountiful to him, that, with "fresh fields and pastures new" ever before him, he has hitherto had no need to resort to the toilsome processes and anxious expedients—"curis acuens mortalia corda"—of our Old World systems of agriculture. On the newer lands of the Union, at least, the rotations followed, the waste of manures, and the general contempt of all method and economy, are such as would break the heart of a Haddingtonshire "grieve," and in a couple of seasons convert his trim acres into a howling wilderness. What would our respected friend Mr Caird say to a course of cropping like the following, which, though given by Professor Johnston as a specimen of New Brunswick farming, is the usual method followed on most of the new soils of North America?—
"He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop of potatoes, followed by one of wheat, with grass seeds. Nine successive crops of hay follow in as many years; after which the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, a crop of wheat is taken; it is then manured for the first time, or limed, and laid down again for a similar succession of crops of hay. This treatment is hard enough; but the unskilful man, after burning and spreading the ashes, takes two or three more crops of grain, leaves it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as it bears a crop which is worth cutting—after all which he either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again into the wilderness state."—(Johnston, vol. i. p. 104.)
Such a system seems, at first sight, to argue a barbarous ignorance of the very first elements of agriculture; and yet, as Professor Johnston remarks, "we English farmers and teachers of agricultural science, with all our skill, should probably, in the same circumstances, do just the same, so long as land was plenty, labour scarce and dear, and markets few and distant." Let no one suppose that our wide-awake kinsman does not know perfectly well what he is about. His apparently rude agricultural practice is regulated by a maxim which some of our Mechists at home would do well to bear in mind—that high farming is bad farming if it is not remunerative. He knows that to manure his land would be to insure the lodging and destruction of his crops, and he therefore leaves his straw to wither in the fields, and lives on in blessed ignorance of the virtues and cost of guano. To plough deep furrows in a virgin soil, saturated with organic matter, would be an idle waste of labour; and the primitive Triptolemus of Michigan scatters the seed upon the surface—or, raising a little mould on the point of a hoe, drops in a few grains of maize, covers them over, and heeds them no more till the golden pyramids are ripe for the knife. The first three crops, thus easily obtained, generally repay to the settler in the wilderness the expense of felling the timber, burning, and cultivating. If he then abandon it, he is at least no loser; but for eight or ten years the soil will still continue to produce crops of natural hay; and then, having extracted from it all that its spontaneous fertility will yield, he sells his possession for what it may bring, and moves off westward to repeat the same exhaustive process on a fresh portion of the forest, leaving to his successor the task of reinvigorating the severely tested powers of the soil by rest and restoratives.
This locust-like progress of the American settler—ever on the move to new lands, and leaving comparative barrenness in his track—must evidently place the case of America beyond the sphere of those ordinary laws of political economy which are applicable in European countries; and Professor Johnston seems to consider the fact of the incessant exhaustion and abandonment of lands as the chief key to a right understanding of the peculiar economical position of the United States. The owner of land in the older and more populous States, who has not learnt to apply a restorative system of culture, derives little benefit from the comparative advantage of situation, while the inhabitants of the towns and villages around him are fed with the surplus spontaneous produce of the far off clearings in Ohio or Missouri. But these in their turn become worn out—and as cultivation travels on westward, the chief centres of agricultural production are gradually receding farther and farther from the chief centres of population and consumption; and this increasing distance, and consequent cost of transport, is every year enhancing the price of grain in the busy and crowded marts of the West—ever filling up with the incessant stream of immigration from Europe. Such is Mr Johnston's view of the present normal condition of the Union in regard to the sustenance of her people; and he makes it the ground-work, as we shall presently see, of certain rather doubtful inferences, of some importance in their bearing on the agriculture of this country. One consequence, however, of any material increase in the price of food in the Eastern States of the Union is very obvious—the proprietor of land in these districts will gradually be enabled to apply, with profit to his exhausted soil, the artificial aids and costlier system of culture followed in Britain. Already this result is apparent in Professor Johnston's account of the energetic spirit of agricultural improvement which is rapidly spreading over most of the New England States. In the keen, restless, and enterprising New Englander, our Old Country farmers will undoubtedly find a more formidable competitor, for the honour of the first place in agricultural advancement, than any they have yet met on this side of the Atlantic. We have seen this year what his invention can produce in mechanical contrivances for economising the labour of the field; and, that he is not indifferent to the aids which science can afford him, is sufficiently proved by the occasion of that visit to America of which Professor Johnston has here given so pleasant and instructive a record. The invitation was not more creditable to the character of the Professor, than to the discernment of the zealous and patriotic men who thus showed how correctly they apprehend the true method of improving their fine country. His engagement was fulfilled during the sitting of the State Legislature at Albany in January 1850, when the hall of the Assembly was given up to him as a lecture-room; the leading members of the Assembly and of the State Agricultural Society were among his auditors, and the greatest public interest was evinced in the important subjects of his prelections.
It is apparent, from many passages of the Notes, that the author has listened too confidingly to the flattering tale—the "canor mulcendas natus ad aures" of the syren of Free Trade. He seems to be gifted with a strong natural faith, and a patriotic confidence in what British enterprise, and especially British agriculture, can achieve in the way of surmounting difficulties. It is not perhaps to be wondered at that one, whose professional pursuits naturally lead him to place a high value upon the aids which science has in store for the agriculturist, should encourage the farmer to think lightly of his present difficulties, and keep up his spirits with the hope of some paulo-post-future prosperity. It must be allowed that the farmer, poor fellow, has not wanted abundance of kind friends to comfort him in his adversity. Generally, however, their consolations—like those of the sympathetic Mrs Gamp—have been rather indefinite—vague moralisings upon his calamity, as if it were some inevitable stroke of Providence, to be bowed to in silent resignation, and hazy anticipations of good luck awaiting him. Others, again—who have professed the greatest friendship for him, and, like the Knight of Netherby, have come down to hearten up the broken-down man by imparting to him some plan of theirs, as sheep-pasturage or the like, for setting him on his legs again—are mentally taking an inventory of his remaining chattels, and calculating when to send the sheriff's officer. But Professor Johnston belongs to neither of these classes of comforters. His opinion, we know, is at least disinterested, and he brings it before us in the shape of a distinct proposition—viz., that the wheat-exporting capabilities of the United States are not so great as have generally been supposed, and that, as they must diminish rather than increase in future, the prospect of competition with American produce need cause no alarm to the British farmer.