98 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



during the prevalence of the labor strikes last summer, with 

 a similar proportion unemployed in nearly all the large 

 cities — bears abundant testimony. The non-producers or 

 consumers, are so greatly in excess of the producers or 

 creators of food, that bread riots are not uncommon, and the 

 poorer inhabitants of cities are forced to a life of want, or to 

 resort to questionable means of obtaining daily subsistence. 

 It is positively sad to think of the large number of young 

 men who might become independent and prosperous farmers, 

 if they would remain contented with the slow but sure gains 

 which agriculture confers upon industry and economy — but 

 who, under a false idea of their own abilities and the allure- 

 ments of sudden wealth to be obtained in other pursuits, rush 

 to our cities to fail in an honorable business ; or to swell the 

 vast army of non-producers who live in idleness and want, 

 and who rear families in misery and degi'adation. The statis- 

 tics of crime and pauperism and ignorance, could they be 

 obtained from all our cities, would reveal man}^ a sorrowful 

 personal history of those who had left happy farm homes to 

 get rich in a short time — but who, becoming discouraged and 

 ashamed to return to honest farm labor, have drifted down- 

 wards to vagrancy and ruin. 



The report of the Warden of the Massachusetts State 

 Prison for 1877, says that of 220 men sentenced during the 

 previous year (1866), 147 were without any regular means 

 , of earning a living ; while that of the warden of one of the 

 ; Pennsylvania penitentiaries, for the same year, shows that 

 . out of 373 prisoners received during 1876, so great a number 

 as 284 had no steady means of obtaining the means of sup- 

 port. And added to these — which are but one or two of a 

 hundred similar facts — may be mentioned the sweeping but 

 forcible assertion of General Dearborn, then collector of 

 Boston, made in a speech in 1840 before the merchants of 

 that place, which I give in his own words. He says : "After 

 an extensive acquaintance with business men and having long 

 been an attentive observer of the course of events in the 

 mercantile community, I am satisfied that among one hun- 



