SECRETARY'S REPORT. 23 



^' Some minds, judging more from appearances than reality, have 

 looked upon commerce and manufiictures as enemies and rivals to 

 ao-riculture. This error cannot be too much combatted, as nothing is 

 more hurtful to agricultural interests. In reality, the distinction 

 between agriculture and manufactures is false : to bring the land 

 into cultivation is also a manufacture, and the transport, the sale, 

 and the purchase of agricultural produce is also a trade. Only this 

 kind of manufacture and commerce being altogether of prime neces- 

 sity, can dispense a little more with skill and capital than the others ; 

 but then they remain in a state of infancy, and when these two pow- 

 extxxl aids are supplied, they become a hundred times more fruitful. 

 Even admitting the distinction which usage puts between the terms, 

 there can be no pro j5 table agriculture without profitable manufac- 

 tures. This is in some measure a mathematical axiom, for commerce 

 and manufactures can alone abundantly provide agriculture with the 

 two most powerful agents of production which exist, namely, Aarkets 

 a.nd capital. 



"It is of consequence, then, that our cultivators apprehend clearly 

 the only means of enriching themselves, lest they hinder their own 

 prosperity. Their opposition would not arrest the course of things, 

 but would render it slow and tedious. All jealousy between agri- 

 cultural and industrial and commercial interests, will only damage 

 both. If you wish to encourage agriculture, develop manufactures 

 and commerce, which multiply consumers ; improve especially the 

 means of communication which bring consumers and producers nearer 

 to each other ; the rest will necessarily follow. Commerce and man- 

 ufactures bear the same relation to agriculture, as the cultivation of 

 forage cro'ps and multiplication of animals do to cereal production. 

 At first they seem opposed to each other, but fundamentally there 

 is such a strong connecting link between them, that the one cannot 

 make any considerable progress without the other."* 

 . The only market now existing in Aroostook for ordinary agricul- 

 tural productions, is that created by the lumbering operations. This 

 is generally a good one to an extent suflScient to absorb the surplus 

 which the settlers now tilling the soil have to dispose of; but it is 

 by no means a uniform one, varying as it necessarily must, with the 



* LaV'Crgne's Rural Economy, pp. 152, 160, 167. 



