1Q ROARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



vicinity of some of our manufacturing towns, the price of farms 

 has increased more than three hundred per cent, within the last 

 fifteen or twenty years, in consequence of the establishment of 

 this other business. There are a good many farmers here who 

 know that, living as they do in the immediate vicinity of some of 

 these manufacturing establishments, they are enabled to get a 

 large surplus from their farms, for which they can obtain ready 

 cash in these places, which before the establishment of these 

 factories, was almost valueless. Hence it appears that all these 

 interests depend upon each other ; that if you increase the manu- 

 facturing interest of the State, you increase the farming interest 

 of the State, and increase the profits of the farmer. If you in- 

 crease our shipbuilding, if you increase the work upon our 

 quarries, if you increase the amount of fishing operations in the 

 State, in short, if you increase any of the different industrial 

 avocations of life, you to a certain extent, at least, improve the 

 agricultural interest of the State. 



It is, perhaps, somewhat unfortunate that we have not, in the 

 past, been able to retain a larger proportion of the men we have 

 raised in our own State. It is somewhat unfortunate, it would 

 seem to us now, that so large a number of the leading men of 

 Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and the 

 Western States, in the professions, in trade, and in the mechanical 

 pursuits, are men who were raised in Maine, and who left this 

 State, because, as they thought, we had not sufficient room for 

 them here ; men who left Maine because in their judgment there 

 was not enough for them to do in Maine; men who left Maine, 

 undoubtedly, some of them, because of a mistaken policy on the 

 part of the State, in consequence of which we have not been able 

 to create more business that should keep our young men at home. 

 It is a fact, that you may go into almost any of our Western 

 States, and you will find that a large number of the leading mer- 

 cantile and professional men, — a large number of the men Who are 

 holding, at the present time, offices of trust and of profit, are men 

 who were educated in Maine, and who went out from us. It has 

 become a serious question how we are to retain, in the future, 

 such a portion of this talent as we need. It seems hardly right 

 that we should furnish so large a portion of the mental and physi- 

 cal forces that have built up other States and made them prosper- 

 ous and powerful. It seems unfortunate that we have not kept a 

 larger portion of these elements at home. How shall we do it ? I 



