396 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Roads were poor and the country was but thinly settled. The 

 general means of communication was on foot, by horseback, or with 

 an ox-team ; no such thing as a spring carriage had been thought 

 of. Farm houses were unpainted, there were no carpets on the 

 floors, no curtains at the windows. Cooking was done by the open 

 fire place, water was drawn with the well sweep, and the wool 

 cards, spinning wheel and loom were found in almost every house. 

 The clothing was all home manufactured, and women were con- 

 tented to wear one dress at a time. Farmers plowed their ground 

 with a wooden plow, the mould-board of which was covered with 

 strips of sheet iron, and harrowed it with a harrow, the teeth of 

 which were of wood. The scythe, and fork and hoe were made 

 by the village blacksmith, and fitted into handles from the farmer's 

 wood-pile — the scythe snath being a crooked stick from the 

 forest. Grain was reaped with the sickle, threshed by the flail, 

 and winnowed by the original winnowing machiue of the Creator. 

 It was carried to mill on the back or by means of an ox-team, 

 often a distance of thirty miles. In autumn the shoemaker with 

 his kit of tools went from house to house to make up shoes for the 

 children, who had been barefooted during the summer. The 

 farmer's stock of reading was limited to the Bible and almanac ; 

 while the privations and hardships of farmers generally, in felling 

 the trees, clearing their farms and maintaining their families, thirty 

 or forty years ago, were such as the present generation can obtain 

 no real conception of. 



Before comparing this condition of farm life in Maine with that 

 we have now, let me say that the improvements we now see have 

 been gradual and perhaps slow. They are too as marked in other 

 lines of thought, and in other fields of effort, as in that relating to 

 farming. A combination of agencies have been at work in all 

 directions, to produce the wonderful changes between the present 

 and the past, that we now witness. The application of steam 

 and water power to machinery, has revolutionized all the 

 processes and modes of manufacture ; it has transformed the 

 means of transportation and communication, and brought remote 

 places near. The smooth fields admit of different treatment than 

 did those cumbered by log-heaps and stumps, and with a denser 

 population, ready markets yield the farmer ready cash. With 

 this have come in an abundant measure the comforts and often the 

 luxuries of a high civilization. But in all the channels in which 

 these improvements have been going on, through all the past, the 



