100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



human nature, — how very, very many of just this class must 

 inevitably tend downward to misery and then to crime. But 

 in farming communities there are no public soup houses, and 

 few persons march to the municipal authorities to ask for 

 bread or work. The statistics of good honest farming, the 

 world over, never show records of bankruptcy, want, starva- 

 tion, and very, very rarely of crime. Farmers pay their 

 debts, and, with some grumbling, (and very likely little con- 

 ception of the benefits they get from them) their taxes — 

 which includes the education of their children, the support of 

 the church, the public roads, and the advancement of good 

 morals and high citizenship. 



The question of the rapid increase of city as against rural 

 population, and the consequent 'disproportion of consumers to 

 producers, has been glanced at as a remote cause of that con- 

 dition of society and business which we term "hard times." 

 A more recent cause is found in the terrible civil war through 

 which our country passed, the changed conditions which it 

 imposed upon our people, and the ill effects it left upon 

 almost every branch of business. All these things are yet 

 vivid in the recollection of every person. Men remember 

 how at the close of the war thought was quickened ; the genius 

 of invention breathed upon skilled labor and workmen were 

 drawn together to give form to their cunning and to put their 

 inventions into effective operation ; large numbers of men 

 were demanded to build elegant residences, business blocks, 

 churches, factories, public works, long lines of railroads and 

 telegraphs — as well as engines and machinery to keep these 

 varied works in constant operation. But a limit was reached ; 

 building stopped ; corner lots and palatial residences went 

 under the hammer ; machinery enabled a few to do the work 

 of many ; the services of the multitude of mechanics and 

 common laborers were not needed ; the wheels of industry 

 were forced to a stand-still, and then came the unmistakable 

 evidences of an over-production of nearly all kinds of manu- 

 factured goods. I am aware that some recent writers on the 

 new phases of political economy, insist that the labor troubles 



