170 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



furnishes, as it loses by the neglect and dissatisfaction caused by- 

 it, is a question worth investigating. Its influence upon the 

 manners and morals of our young men is less doubtful, as is 

 fully manifested by the numbers loafing about shops and corners, 

 smoking, swaggering, and swearing. Some of our cities, lil^c 

 Bangor and Calais, have grown up b}^ lumber. Have they been 

 the means of improving the agriculture of their vicinities ?" 

 Another in one of the Saco river towns, says : 

 " The lumbering business is not much carried on now, for 

 want of the material. Formerly, this was a great lumber region, 

 and its influence upon agriculture was most pernicious. And 

 so it must always be, where the same person undertakes to be 

 both farmer and lumberman. The towns of Fryeburg, Lovcll, 

 Sweden, Denmark, and Brownfield, were, fifty years ago, -equal 

 to any in the State for the growth of pine timber, and I sup- 

 pose, that without exception, every farmer who engaged in 

 lumbering, grew poor under the operation, and many within my 

 personal knowledge, had to mortgage, and some lost their farms 

 by it." 



A correspo'ndent in the valley of the Kennebec says : 

 " One-half of all the lumbering on the Kennebec is fitted out 

 from this village, and makes a market for most of the surplus 

 grain raised, and consumes considerable of foreign growth. 

 Indeed it may as well be said that all the grain, or other sup- 

 plies, taken from our producers, has to be returned in some form 

 from that raised west. Although this business has employed 

 a good many men it is an irregular employment, lasting not 

 more than half the year, the balance of which is too often 

 wasted, sometimes worse than wasted. Less lumbering would 

 cause more emigrating and perhaps more farming; which of 

 these two tendencies would preponderate would depend on cir- 

 cumstances, and it would be hard to predict. As a State, it is 

 plain that it would add more to our solid capital to cut np more 

 lumber than could be cut within our own resources; but in this, 

 as in our foreign importations, individual interest will not look 

 to the public good, nor always to its own remote and highest 

 advantage. On the whole, it may be confidently said that large 

 income, whether in mining or lumbering, or in any other de- 

 partment of enterprise, even though it be attended with equally 



