It has been said that the gold produced in the mining districts of the United States has cost far more in labor and physical loss than its value amounted to. The cost of the farm-land in the United States leaves the apparent waste on gold in absolute insignificance. There are thousands of American farms to-day, probably hundreds of thousands, of which the land under the hammer would not bring as much money as the fences of those same farms have cost. The expense of clearing wooded land to fit it for agriculture has been far greater in almost every section of the country than the value of the land at the highest price prevailing would repay. The work of fencing and clearing was done by other generations, who got less from their farms than the present occupants are receiving. One of the favorite arguments of men who urge younger men to go West and take a farm and grow up with the country is, that they will never lack for plenty to eat. This statement is entirely true. A man can always have plenty of food from his own estate if he cultivates it at all, or has any live stock. But one accompanying fact is, and this fact should be carefully considered--that frequently he has no place at which to market at a profit what he produces. He is so far from any market that what he does not eat he frequently is obliged to waste. Corn in the ear has been used during many winters for fuel in portions of the West, not because there was no wood to be had, but because there was no convenient place at which to market the corn, even at the bare expense of shelling and hauling to market, to say nothing of the previous cost of planting, cultivation, and harvesting. Where a farmer is near a market, as in some eastern States, his table is no better set than that of the cheapest-paid mechanic in the city. He may have eighty acres of wheat, but if his family wishes to eat a cabbage they are obliged to go to some village market and purchase it; the farmer himself has not had time to plant and cultivate it. Summer boarders find fewer vegetables in the country than in the city. The natural question occurs, why does not the farmer change his business as hundreds of thousands of mechanics and other men are doing every year? The answer is that it is impossible for him to do so. He cannot leave his farm without ruin to his family, for to neglect to plant and cultivate is to lose the credit upon which in ninety-nine cases in a hundred he must subsist. He cannot sell his farm at auction under the hammer as if it were a city house or a village residence, for purchasers of farms are the rarest of all purchasers of real-estate in the United States. This is not in accordance with European precedent or supposition, but it has been demonstrated in every State, and almost every county of the Union.