386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



go to the West, or the qualities in demand in the manufacturing 

 towns. 



In some towns is found an increasing element of Canadian 

 French, good-natured, easy-going, thriftless people, living in a 

 slipshod way from their labor when things go well, but, if sick- 

 ness comes, or crops are short, or the winter long and hard, more 

 or less dependent upon the poor-fund. This floating population, 

 and especially its French element, is the bane of local and even 

 State politics, especially in New Hampshire, for many of its 

 voters are purchasable at least once at each election, and, as it 

 holds the balance of power in many small towns, purchasers for 

 both parties are rarely wanting, and prices rule high. I have 

 personally known voters who openly counted their election wages 

 an important item in the year's revenue. It will be readily be- 

 lieved that all public interests have suffered enormously by the 

 substitution of such people for the thrifty, public-spirited farmers 

 who preceded them. This French element is further objection- 

 able in that it keeps itself aloof from the spirit of its adopted 

 country, intact in language as well as religion, and has declared 

 its purpose to change New England to New France. 



2. Many farms are without resident cultivators, and in all 

 probability will never again be homesteads. The New Hamp- 

 shire Commissioner of Agriculture reports eight hundred and 

 eighty-seven such farms, and these are only a small part. I know 

 a district where eight contiguous farms have been thus aban- 

 doned, and, taking the farm on which the writer was born as the 

 center, a circle with a radius of five miles would inclose twenty 

 farms abandoned within the last few years. 



Some of these have good buildings, stone fences, apple and 

 sugar orchards, and all have made comfortable homes. On some 

 of them a few acres of the best land are tilled, while the rest pro- 

 duces a lessening crop of hay or is used for pasture. The fine 

 old orchards, uncared for, are wasting away, a lilac or a few rose- 

 bushes struggling for life in the grass show the site of the old 

 garden, the buildings are falling to decay, and homesteads that 

 have fostered large and prosperous families for generations are 

 a desolation and will soon be a wilderness. In some districts the 

 old country roads are becoming impassable from the growth of 

 bushes and the cessation of all repairs. An eminent New Eng- 

 land judge told me last summer that public sentiment in these 

 districts will not allow a jury to find damages against the au- 

 thorities in case of injuries to travelers from such defective high- 

 ways, on the ground that the diminished population can not keep 

 them in repair. 



The abandonment of this rough country and the transfer of 

 its population to more fertile regions or more remunerative em- 



