The great difficulty in carrying on farming operations on a large scale in Illinois has always been the scarcity of labor.  Land is cheap and plenty, but labor scarce and dear:  exactly the reverse of what obtains in England, where land is dear and labor cheap.  It must be evident that a different kind of farming would be found here from that in use in older countries.  There, the best policy is to cultivate a few acres well; here, it has been found more profitable to skim over a large surface.  But within a few years the introduction of labor-saving machines has changed the conditions of farming, and has rendered it possible to give good cultivation to large tracts of land with few men.  Many of the crops are now put in by machines, cultivated by machines, and harvested by machine.  If, as seems probable, the steam-plough of Fawkes shall become a success, the revolution in farming will be complete.  Already some of the large farmers employ wind or steam power in various ways to do the heavy work, such as cutting and grinding food for cattle and hogs, pumping water, etc.

Although the soil and climate of Illinois are well adapted to fruit-culture, yet, from various causes, it has not, till lately, been much attended to.  The early settlers of Southern and Middle Illinois were mostly of the Virginia race, Hoosiers,—­who are a people of few wants.  If they have hog-meat and hominy, whiskey and tobacco, they are content; they will not trouble themselves to plant fruit-trees.  The early settlers in the North were, generally, very poor men; they could not afford to buy fruit-trees, for the produce of which they must wait several years.  Wheat, corn, and hogs were the articles which could be soonest converted into money, and those they raised.  Then the early attempts at raising fruit were not very successful.  The trees were brought from the East, and were either spoiled by the way, or were unsuited to this region.  But the great difficulty has been the want of drainage.  Fruit-trees cannot be healthy with wet feet for several months of the year, and this they are exposed to on these level lands.  With proper tile-draining, so that the soil shall be dry and mellow early in the spring, we think that the apple, the pear, the plum, and the cherry will succeed on the prairies anywhere in Illinois.  The peach and the grape flourish in the southern part of the State, already, with very little care; in St. Clair County, the culture of the latter has been carried on by the Germans for many years, and the average yield of Catawba wine has been two hundred gallons per acre.  The strawberry grows wild all over the State, both in the timber and the prairie; and the cultivated varieties give very fine crops.  All the smaller fruits do well here, and the melon family find in this soil their true home; they are raised by the acre, and sold by the wagon-load, in the neighborhood of Chicago.

Stock-raising is undoubtedly the most profitable kind of farming on the prairies, which are so admirably adapted to this species of rural economy, and Illinois is already at the head of the cattle-breeding States.  There were shipped from Chicago in 1860, 104,122 head of live cattle, and 114,007 barrels of beef.