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Show 1879. No year since the beginning of the Republic, probably, has brought to it a more solid prosperity than the one which closes to day [today]. Nor do we mean by this the actual monetary value to the country of the resumption of species payment. The ease with which resumption was accomplished, was an indication that this prosperity already existed, and that the people not only had full pockets, but they had that absolute confidence in their Government which is the most secure way of keeping them full. We were warned that the condition of the country was so unstable that a crash involving every commercial interest would follow the experiment of resumption; but in fact the crisis was passed so easily that the country hardly knew is was reached. Instead of the threatened bankruptcy, the balance of coin in the Treasury increased over all payments $10,000,000. The year of 1879, will, however, be remembered in future as that in which the attention of the country was for the first time directed to its farming interests as a subject of paramount importance. Several causes have contributed to this end. Firstly, the opening of the foreign trade in meat, fruit and dairy produce to such an extent as to convince the mass of our people that this country was destined to become for centuries the great food manufactory for Europe. The failure of the crops in Great Britain and on the Continent, and our exceptionally enormous harvests this summer, have impressed this fact upon the most careless observer. Secondly, the forced overflow of the idle working population of the cities and towns into the yet unopened territory has brought our agricultural resources before the people as never before. The number of emigrants from the Eastern cities to the West and Southwest more than trebled in 1879 the number the previous year. In each of these instances, be it remembered, an unemployed, half-starved mechanic, clerk or professional man has become a producer, and by so much the material wealth of the country has been increased. Heretofore, as we all know, the tendency of capital has been into the cities; but this year it has been turned into a million tiny rills to the opening up of the boundless resources of the wilderness. We begin to see that the future success of the United States as a whole will be not that of a nation of small shopkeepers but of a nation of small manufacturers and farmers. No country has ever had enduring prosperity in which the land was held by large tenures and of necessity was worked to let out at terms ruinous to the laboring class. Russia has tried that plan and failed; so has England; so have our own Southern States. In every case the result has been the same a luxurious dominant caste, a hopeless, malcontent peasantry; half tilled, wornout land; cruelty and indifference to the poor; want and insurrection. The events of this year indicate that we are not likely to make this mistake. The exodus of the negroes from the South has made our own serfs small farmers, and will drive the Southern land holder to a personal supervision, and more detailed method of working his own soil, a method which, however disagreeable, will prove in the end to his advantage, pecuniarily and morally. The emigration from both England and Ireland during this year has been largely of the tenant-farmer class. Like our own negroes they are beginning to appreciate the advantage to a man in owning the ground that he works. Our dairy farmers are just awakening to the almost illimitable markets open for their products, and the necessity for their best skill and care if they would command these markets. Our wool growers told the same story a few weeks ago. In short, the whole nation, during the year just ended, has discovered within itself an inexhaustible source of steady, enduring prosperity. When we remember, too, that the farmer's life thus recommended to our people is one of the most wholesome for body and mind, most free from temptation, and productive of the quiet domestic virtues which give to a people solid rank among nations, we can understand the value of the gift to us of this year. <br><br> N. Y. [New York] Tribune. |