Southern planter : devoted to agriculture, horticulture, and the ...

440 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER.
tered indiscriminately over his fielda. In
the most busy season it often happens that
a great deal of time is lost in catching
working animals that are let out on pastures
while the men eat dinner. In the
heat of a hot day, as at noon, horses and
oxen would do much better in the stables
if supplied with green food. For such
purpose no farmer should be without the
necessary quantity of clover to be used as
soiling. We do not refer to that grown on
meadow land with grasses, but to clover
produced on meadow land heavilymnnured.
Such clover will be succulent, and while
it furnishes a highly nutritive feed for
working animals, it prevents them from
having a desire to consume large quantities
of water. Clover grown in the manner
referred to, would produce the second
season three crops. After each cutting it
shohld be heavily top-dressed. If the
pastures are bare from being over-stocked,
or parched by the heat of summer, the cat-
tle should be fed on clover or other soiling.
The value of it for increasing the quantity
and quality of milk and butter, will soon
be understood by any person who pursues
such a course. This system of practice
has its influence in saving time. If the
fences are bad, or that cattle roam in the
w^oods, by the feeding of special green
food in a particular place thus causing cattle
to come in search of it, much time may
be saved. We know of a shiftless, disorderly
farmer—and perhaps there are oth-
ers as well as he—who drives his cattle
three or four miles to be milked, often w^hen
above their knees in mud. He has several
horses to spare, and milk cans growing
rusty for want of use. He does not estimate
the loss arising from such a practice.
His cattle travel in coming home twice a
day to be milked, and returning to the pasture,
make four journeys equal to twelve
miles — when the roads are muddy
the labor is much increased—the feet of
the cattle become subject to disease
while travelling they are not feeding, and
consequently not supplying the raw mate-
rial from which to make flesh, milk or butter—they
dung on the road and its manu-
rial effects are lost to the pasture— anil in
addition to these losses, arising from carelessness
or a want of " order upon the
farm," the time of a man or boy is also
lost in making the journeys referred to.
Working Farmer.
Boot and Shoe Trade.
In the month of May, 1818, the good
sloop called the Delight came into the port
of New York, freighted at Boston with a
full cargo of boots and shoes, consigned
to Spoflbrd & Tileston, the first boot and
shoe-jobbers of importance in New York,
who then commenced supplying the shipping
demand from this port instead of
Boston.
These gentlemen were therefore the first
to introduce, extensively, the wholesale
boot and shoe trade into this city. The
manufacture was confined at that time to
New England, whence they received supplies
on commission. The trade rapidly
extended, but in 1829 there were only
four jobbing houses in this branch of in-
dustry.
The large sales of boots and shoes for
shipping induced Messrs. Spofford & Tile-
ston to invest capital in a line of ships to
ports in the South, for which they became
agents as well as principal owners, and
which being successful, led them to become
large ship owners, and at length to
abandon the boot and shoe trade to others.
The boot and shoe manufacture of this city
and its environs is therelbre of modern
date. It now forms one-third of the whole
manufacturing power of the country.
New England and Pennsylvania still retaining
two thirds. This proportion is rapidly
changing in favor of New Yoik. In
this city there are about fifty-five boot and
shoe jobbing houses, doing business to the
extent of fifteen to sixteen millions of dollars
yearly.
Common goods, such as men's pegged
boots and brogans, women's pegged and
common sewed shoes and gaiters are manufactured
in the villages of New England,
namely: Lynn, Haverhill, Worcester, Millford,
Natick, Randolph, Abington, Reading,
Danvers, Georgetown, Stoughton, and
several other places in the State of Mas-
sachusetts.
The better kinds of goods, such as men's
and women's fine sewed boots and shoes
are manufactured in this city, in Newark,
N. J., and other small places adjacent.
There is but one other branch of manufacturing
industry that has increased so
rapidly as the boot and shoe business, and
that is the clothing trade.
There are some boot and shoe jobbers