30 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



find the solution for myself in the great fact that the rapid 

 development of steam power made the fertile plains of the West 

 tributary to the markets of the East and of Europe almost in an 

 economic moment of time, and a dazzling prize was held up in 

 the rich homesteads where a man could accumulate wealth by 

 the very solidifying of population, the rise of land making his 

 fortune. The doctor, the lawyer, the minister, the school teacher, 

 the statesman went West to win wealth and fame through the 

 founding and developing of empire states, the greatness and 

 splendor of whose development surpass that of any other world's 

 epoch. Such prizes were never hung up before any people in 

 any period of history. It is not surprising that our boys went 

 so rapidly and our money so fast after them. It is rather a sur- 

 prise that they all did not migrate to those regions and possess 

 themselves of these most glittering prizes of the ages. The little 

 northeast corner of the United States, in area not equal to a 

 single one of these mighty empire states, was the one 

 potent source of men and money fitted for and equal to the 

 founding of these states. They determined their institutional 

 life, dedicating them to the civil, religious and industrial free- 

 dom of our fathers. They determined that the polity of the 

 Puritan Fathers should be the polity of this mighty country, 

 and fixed forever the destiny of the American Nation as a nation 

 of freedom in all the spheres of life. By the union of East and 

 West the South was compelled into a course of freedom and the 

 American continent was forever dedicated to the civil and 

 religious liberty founded by the Puritans. The influence of the 

 united nation has leaped the Pacific, is lifting the lives of Japan, 

 is permeating the Philippines, and in its subtle influence is acting 

 on China as a ferment. Industrial liberty follows civil and 

 religious liberty, and lifts a people into a new horizon of view 

 and purpose. It fell to no other people of history to do so mighty 

 a work, and our liberty, culture and greatness is to become that 

 of the world. While we regret our temporary loss, yet you and 

 I are glad that the Yankee influence is permeating the whole 

 globe, and now that we have boys enough and money enough 

 to repeople and reinvigorate New England, can feel a satisfaction 

 in the fact that we have done this great work. It was the pause 

 for this work, rather than the fact that we could not have made 

 farming pay, which caused the decline in New England agricul- 



