Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1891 — Truck Farming. [ARTICLE]

Truck Farming.

Truck faming is market gardening carried on so far away from centers of consumption as to require railway and vessel carriage te get the products to market. Long lines of railway have made such farming possible, and now North and South Carolina planters can daily send their “truck” to Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. So far the Census Bureau finds that about 600,000 acres of land are devoted to this kind of farming, and that $100,000,000 are invested in the industry, and that the annual products are worth nearly $80,000,000 after paying freights and commissions. These farms employ 217,000 men, 9,000 women, and 15,000 children. Seventy-six thousand horses and mules are employed in the work, and nine million dollars’ worth of implements. This industry has sprung into existence in the past ten years, and is growing very rapidly. It seems like pretty good farming which realizes $l3O gross income an acre on the land tilled.

The bad outlook for the European wheat crop has caused an advance In the price of wheat in our markets. The for eign demand for our wheat, it is thought, will be unusually large this year. As the foreigner buys more largely of our wheat, our farmers learn the importance of their foreign market. Would it not be a good thing to enlarge and extend the foreign market for our farm products by taking foreign goods more freely in change for them. Stowed away in one of the rooms at the Capitol in Montpelier, Vt., are the remains of the first printing press brought to this country. Upon it was printed the freemen's oath for Massachusetts, the first thing printed in British North America. If you want to see jerked beef, come down and watch a Texas cowboy lasso a running steer.