THIRD DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 549 



cut up into small farms. Farming was the most honorable of employ- 

 ments among the ancient Romans. Cincinnatus was called from the plow 

 to save his country, and went to the capital leaving his oxen standing in 

 the furrow; even as Elisha was called four hundred years before from 

 plowing with twelve yoke of oxen to succeed Elijah in the prophetic office. 

 When Cincinnatus had borne the victorious eagles back to Rome, he 

 returned to his farm again, as did our later Cincinnatus, Washington, 

 when he retired from public life. Cato, the censor, was prouder of his 

 book on farming than of his fame as a hero, an orator, or a statesman. 

 The works of Cato, Varro, Columella, and Pliny on farming are reckoned 

 among the Latin classics, and the Georgics of Virgil, written in praise of 

 rural life, are superior in poetic merit to his immortal iEneid. 



After the downfall of Rome in the fourth century came the dark ages, 

 during which the command of the Master was reversed, and plowshares 

 were beaten into swords and pruning hooks into spears. During all the 

 ages of feudalism agriculture languished, the farmer was a serf, and 

 Europe lay fallow until the waking up of humanity in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, the era of the invention of printing, the revival of letters, the decay 

 of feudalism, and the settlement of America. 



Since that time there has been a steady advance in all the arts of peace, 

 and labor and laborer have risen step by step to their present dignity. It 

 was not until the present century, however, that the forces of nature were 

 much used in the cultivation of the soil, and agriculture attained the dig- 

 nity of a science. The hoe and hand-rake, the sickle and scythe, the five- 

 fingered cradle and the flail, have only been superseded by the cultivator, 

 the horse-rake, the reaper and mower, and the thrashing machine, in the 

 last fifty years. Agricultural chemistry, the science of the adaptation of 

 soils and manures to plants and to each other, is not yet twenty-five years 

 old. All this progress has been made too in spite of prejudice and stupid 

 conservatism. Every labor-saving appliance has been opposed as an inno- 

 vation. It is claimed by some that this general substitution of machinery 

 for muscular labor is a curse, and shares with the Chinese the blame of 

 low wages, scarcity of employment, and distress among laborers. With 

 the beginning of the present century there sprang up a new civilization, I 

 may almost say, through the employment of those forces of nature that 

 had up to that time been wholly unsubdued, or but partially broken to 

 harness. This century has been the age of machinery, and its use has 

 revolutionized all industries. True, before this century water power was 

 utilized in grinding grain and sawing lumber, and the free winds of heaven 

 were compelled, like the captive Samson, to turn mill-wheels, and become 

 if not hewers of wood at least drawers of water. The Connecticut River 

 was turned over by the Yankee sixteen times on its way to the sea. But 

 now all the forces of nature and all the mechanical powers are yoked 

 together to man's triumphal chariot. The lightning and the light put on 

 his livery; coal deposits, lying in subterranean beds, have been exhumed, 

 and their hoarded sun-rays compelled by human brains to take the place 

 of human muscle in the world's work. The mighty giant, steam, after 

 eluding the halter and harness of man and enjoying a play spell of nearly 

 six thousand years, is now broken to work and becomes a competitor with 

 muscle in every department of labor. With fingers more delicate than a 

 lady's, it has the strength of a giant. It can engrave a seal, or crush 

 mountains of cpiartz; draw out without breaking a thread as fine as gos- 

 samer, or lift a ship of war like a toy in the air; embroider muslin or forge 

 cannon; cut steel into ribbons or drive loaded vessels; drill the eye of a 

 needle or tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. Even the lightning, that 



