Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1896 — FERTILE LANCASTER. [ARTICLE]

FERTILE LANCASTER.

The BAnaer CeMty or the United Stacea z la the Valae «rs lte Farm Prodaot*. There has been much rivalry among counties in various states over the claim of superior fertility and productiveness. The largest agricultural copnty in each state concerned makes claim to supremacy in this regard, a claim attained in the case of many western counties by much valuable oratory. Recently an aiithentic statement’ of the agricultural products of the (several states made its appearance, and it shows that the banner county of the United States, ao for as agricultural products are concerned, is Lancaster county, Pa. The farms of that famed and beautiful county of southern Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna river border line, yielded, in the year recorded, produce to the amount ot $8,000,000. Next in the value of agricultural products is St. Lawrence county, N. Y., with a total-of $6,000,000, though the comparison la hardly a fair one, because the area of St. Lawrence is three times as large ag the area of Lancaster. The value oollectively of the farms of St. Lawrence county is $32,000,000, while those of Lancaster are valued at $70,000,000. Lancaster has much better railroad connections than St. Lawrence, and, moreover, is closer to a desirable market for agricultural products. Third on the list of fertile American counties Is Chester, Pa., which has an enviable record for chickens and dairy produce. It adjoins Lancaster county to the east,* being nearer Philadelphia. It is smaller by about 25 per cent, than Lancaster, and yielded last year $5,800,000 in agricultural products. Still further to the east in Pennsylvania, but beyond the Philadelphia line, is Bucks county, noted for its market gardening, and producing in a year $5,400,000 of agricultural products. Bucks county is 610 square miles in land area, but it very hearly equals in the yield of its farms the most fertile and productive of the New England counties, Worcester, Mass., the products of which, according to the table at hand, wtere $5,500,000 a year ago. Worcester county is literally in the middle of Massachusetts, for it extends clear through the state, tn the most central part, from the New Hampshire boundary line on the north and the Connecticut and Rhode Island boundary on the south. It is an important agricultural county—-the most important in New England—but is larger, as has been seen, than any of the fertile Pennsylvania counties with which it ranks in value of products. The sixth of the very productive farming counties of the United States is Colusa county. Cal. In area it is larger than the three Pennsylvania counties together, and has a record of $5,300,000 of agricultural produce. Colusa cownty is in the northern part of the state, and It is not supposed by any patriotic Cal • ifornian that the time is or can be aery far distant when itwill rank at theheadj of all the counties of the’United States, even though now it is the last of those which have passed the $5,000,000 mark in the products of their farms in a single year. When the reports from the Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska wheat farms are in this year claim for a place somewhere near tV* top may be made, but the fact isthat corn-grow'ing or wheat-growing counties stand relatively low upon the list when compared with those wljose produoCs are much diversified.—N. Y. Sun. j