FARM LIFE IN NEAV ENGLAND. 49 



been followed all through these eighteen hundred years, regretting 

 the days of our father's when agriculture paid better. Is there no 

 originality in mankind? It seeras to me that it is time to quit that 

 subject and take a new theme, the tariff or woman's suffrage. It 

 has always been fashionable to uphold the past. A peculiarly gifted 

 class have applied themselves to this in New England, while the 

 facts show that the price the farmer receives for all of his produc- 

 tions has greatly increased in the average of years, while the articles 

 he has purchased have decreased with the single exception of rum 

 which has more than quadrupled and then doubled. But fortunately 

 that does not concern you of Maine. 



Did time permit us to make comparisons of the net profits of 

 capital invested in agriculture, commerce, manufacturing and mer- 

 cantile occupations, we should find that the profits of the former are 

 in the average of years one-third greater. I derive this fact from 

 figures of mercantile agencies (who are all getting rich recording the 

 failures of business men), and my knowledge of book farming, 

 account book farming, to give the whole title, and I defy any one 

 not a bank cashier or a railroad director to argue them down. If 

 this is a fact, it would seem that all other occupations would rush 

 into farming, for I find the same dissatisfaction and grumbling in 

 them, but the long houis of toil in summer, the humiliation of 

 wearing rough clothing and showing hardened hands speak louder 

 to them than dollars and cents. Tlie hope of reward is greater in 

 these callings for the reward is more unequal, a few getting rich 

 where many fail, and the hope to be the successful one keeps them 

 there, while in agriculture comparatively few get rich while all to a 

 certain degree prosper. The ratios are reversed. Here we can 

 aptly quote the old Latin proverb, '-Audaces fortuna zuvat, 

 timidosque repellit." Fortune assists the bold and repels the coward. 



If we call reward an honest equivalent for money invested, labor 

 actually performed, mental application given, the outlook is now 

 better in the East than in any other section. If we accept of a 

 different definition and include specula*iion in its many seductive and 

 deceptive forms, business trickery overreaching and greed, the 

 world outside of New England offers far better chances. If to our 

 definition we add home and village influences upon the children, 

 their educational advantages and chances of following honorable 

 lives, then certainly there is no questioning the position we have 

 taken. 



