WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1858
125
communities, has great advantages that a new country has not- like Texas, on the frontier, where little settlements are removed, as El Paso is, six or eight hundred miles from the main body of the people. There they have not the facilities they have in Georgia. The people of Georgia are an educated people; they have every advantage possible; every commercial facility to obtain those things which can only reach, by extraordinary means, the remote verges of civilization in the United States, through the medium of Senators and :Representatives. Hence it is that I feel it·my duty to do whatever I think will contribute to their comforts; to their advantages, to supply the defects that exist in their peculiar situation ; and I know no means of more readily attaining that object than by distributing information on the subject of agriculture, through the Patent Office Reports, and at the same time distributing such rare seeds as may be convenient and useful to them. In the ordinary course of things, without the facilities fur- nished by the Government, how long would it have taken the Chinese sugar-cane to reach the remotest verge of Texas, where it is now flourishing, and where vast quantities of molasses are made from it, and not less than fifty or sixty acres are now culti- vated by a single planter, who, a few years ago, had to transport his sugar several hundred miles, and pay duties upon it? That is being perfected there as one of the grand productions of the country, and it has affected the distribution of comforts that could not have reached them without great expense for years and years to come; and in portions of the country where the indigenous cane of America could not be cultivated and could not be produc- tive. These are some of the advantages we have derived. Again, corn has been introduced into that country from the Patent Office that is productive beyond all former example; not only that, but every variety of wheat thrown upon a soil the most productive on earth. Our soil will produce from thirty to fifty bushels of wheat, per acre. Our whole country, from latitude 31° to 36°, is adapted to the culture of wheat, cotton, and _other products that are rare in other portions of the Union. Our staple crop there has been benefited and improved by the distribution of seeds · obtained from the Patent Office. Cottonseed has been introduced of peculiar and productive character; and that is an improvement to our agricultural interests. Sir, I have not urged this as any peculiar benefit to the farmer; but when we look at his position, ought we not to have some regard for him? All others are dependent upon him. Strike him out,
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