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Better Than Gold

About This Item

  • Title: Better Than Gold
  • Date: 22 July 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01254
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 22 July 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Better Than Gold." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01254.xml (TEI)
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BETTER THAN GOLD.

While the whole length and breadth of our country is excited about the gold discoveries on the far off Pacific shore, our toiling agriculturists are quietly engaged in storing away a golden harvest of far greater value than all the shining dust that will be gathered for months to come. The splendid weather for the past few weeks has enabled the farmers to secure their wheat and rye in fine condition, together with one of the most abundant hay crops that has ever rewarded the labor of the agriculturist. The worst croaker this season grumbles in a subdued tone. In some localities there has been almost a total, and in others a partial failure in the cereals, but our exchanges give an assurance of an abundance that should gladden our hearts and inspire us with gratitude to Him who gives “seed time and harvest, and who sends the early and the latter rain.” The agricultural interest is now reaping, along with its splendid harvest, the results of the depression which has fallen upon the manufacturing and commercial interests. The revulsion of 1857, brought about by the neglect of that provision to national industry which the Government owed us, but refused to give, has prostrated not only the shipper, the merchant, and the manufacturer, but the farmer along with them. Europe is extremely anxious to sell to us, but will not buy of us; and our trouble is that we have been buying of her too freely, to the neglect and injury of our home industry.

The result is that, in the paralysis which has fallen upon our workshops, the farmers have lost not only the foreign but the home demand for their products. Until that home demand can be animated and increased by fostering and promoting our own in preference to foreign workshops, the depression in the prices of agricultural produce must continue without abatement.

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