38 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and to count a billion, would at the same rate, take one the nice 

 little period of eighty-three years ; and to count the proceeds of our 

 country's agricultural productions for a single 3'ear, would require 

 the services of three eighty -year old men, their entire lives from the 

 cradle to the grave. 



It is little use to attempt to realize the extent of such values, but 

 by casting awa}^ the seven right hand figures in these amounts, we 

 can comprehend the relative proportion one set bears to another set. 

 Looking at it in this way, we find that the relative value of our live 

 stock, fences and crops is 165 : 174 : 245 ; or in other words it takes 

 one dollar and seventy-four cents worth of fence to keep one dollar 

 and sixty-five cents worth of animals from eating up and destroying 

 two dollars and forty-five cents worth of products. Is this, I ask, 

 a specimen of good economy, either individual or political? It 

 occurs to me not. 



You may saj' that these fences are largely, permanent structures, 

 and that the picture makes the case look worse than it realh* is. 



Well, let us look at it in another light. It is estimated upon 

 equally- good authority that the cost of fences at the present time in 

 the United States, (1880) has reached $2,000,000,000. Now the 

 annual cost of keeping these in repair, of building when needed, 

 together with the interest and taxes on the same, is, according to 

 careful estimates made by Orange Judd and published in the Ameri- 

 can Agriculturist, sufficient to pay all the cost of our United States 

 arm}', nav}', general government expenses, including pensions, and 

 leave enough balance to pay ever}^ cent of the intei'est on the public 

 debt. This, remember, is our annual fencing tax. 



I am very glad to learn through recent volumes of your reports 

 of the State Board of Agriculture, that the farmers of Maine are 

 looking into this matter. 



I am glad also, to see so man}' farms with the roadside fences 

 removed, in your own and adjoining counties. The old saying that 

 good line fences make good neighbors, is no more true than that 

 no fences on the roadside make good neighbors. The law in nearly 

 all the states now makes it obligatory upon the owner of cattle to 

 keep those cattle upon his own premises, so that he who owns no 

 animals is not compelled to fence against those who do. 



Roadside fences are a temptation to some persons to pasture the 

 higluva}', and they are alwa^'S inclined to cultivate habits of laziness 

 •or carelessness in boj's, who are sent to drive or watch cattle on the 



