POPULATION IN FARMING COUNTIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 195, 22 December 1876, Page 7

POPULATION IN FARMING COUNTIES.

+♦ The State census in New York shows that there has been a decrease of population in ten of its agricultural counties in. the last five years amounting to 6,177. All the counties having a large city, except Jefferson, show a decided increase, which reveals the fact that the tendency of our population is more and more towards cities. All the increase of the State in the hist five years, which amounts to 322,000, has been in cities and villages. The tendency has been marked in New England for the last fifty years, and is destined to go on in the future. Nothing can be more certain than that in the older States the consumers of agricultural products are rapidly increasing, while the farming population is decreasing, or barely holds its own. It follows from this that farm products must increase in value. The demand for them grows faster than the supply. Within fifty years the price of many of these products has doubled, and some of them quadrupled, veal and mutton were

thought to he well sold at four and five cents apoand, cheese at six cents, eggs at ten, butter at twelve and a half, poultry at ten, and beef and pork at five or six cents. Animal products are, without doubt, destined to advance in price still further. If prices go up as consumers multiply, farming must pay better in the future than it has in the past. The young men who, during our Centennial year, will make up their minds as to their business in life, should take these facts into consideration. There is to be a harder struggle for bread and the comforts of life in the large cities where consumers are so rapidly multiplying. Labor will not be so well rewarded there. All farm products will be in greater demand, and will bear higher prices, while the cost of production will not be materially increased. The comforts of life have greatly improved in our farming districts, and in most of them in the older States the style of living is much above that of laboring people in cities. To those who stick by the farm and cultivate the paternal acres the future promise 3 an abundant reward.