Though I have already indicated, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such importance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is peculiarly an American abuse, which urgently cries for reform.
Solon Robinson says the fence-tax is the heaviest of our farmer's taxes. I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible.
Highways we must have, and people must traverse them; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops growing on either side. In France, and other parts of Europe, you see grass and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten tracks, with nothing like a fence between them. Yet those crops are nowise injured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under subjection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the wayside.
In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small scale, and for short distances, has nearly been superceded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every way unwholesome. Every animal should be turned out to grass, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We must have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food.
Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork, will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars: each animal having been killed while in perfect health, unfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their sustenance was drawn and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meat, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less than that of bringing through the animals on their legs; while the danger of putrefaction might be utterly precluded.