64 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



the agriculture of France by the new conditions after the French 

 Revolution, has caused the French to become the best farmers in 

 the world. The changes came so rapidly, the improvements 

 were so sudden, that one could scarcely believe that the new 

 France had grown so suddenly out of the old. 



In this brief outline we can see how political conditions 

 wrought great changes for the farmer. The physical conditions 

 of soil and climate had existed for ages, but the freedom of the 

 man to make the most of himself depended upon political 

 conditions. 



Here, perhaps, we had better turn to the consideration of the 

 farmer in the United States. 



We all know that permanent settlements were effected in this 

 new world only because the soil was cultivated and the new 

 comers made for themselves permanent homes. Thousands upon 

 thousands of those who came to the new country came from the 

 political and agricultural conditions existing as they have been 

 already described, from France, England, Germany, and some 

 other countries. Great as were the difficulties of the new settlers 

 in clearing away the timber, in fighting with the Indians, and in 

 contending with all the difficulties which must exist in a new 

 country, their condition of independence was from the beginning 

 far superior to their condition of dependence in the mother 

 countries. It was not until those engaged in agriculture had 

 succeeded in producing enough, and more than was necessary, 

 for their maintenance, that anything besides agriculture could 

 be developed. In other words, all industries and business enter- 

 prises depend primarily upon agriculture for their success and 

 maintenance. The food supply is the all important question. 

 Fish and game can never support a whole nation. 



Farmers in the past have had to learn bitter lessons by experi- 

 ence. In the southern part of the United States it was early 

 discovered that the one crop of cotton grown by slave labor would 

 be profitable, but this could not go on forever. Two results were 

 sure to follow. One, that the careless method pursued in raising 

 this one crop, ruined the soil and did not fit it for anything else. 

 Again, that slavery, as a system, could not, in the progress of 

 the world, continue to exist. We are all familiar with the causes 

 and results of the Civil War, which did away with the whole 

 agricultural system of the South, and which, of course, brought 



