SECRETARY'S REPORT. 35 



question submitted, your committee ask leave to go a little further 

 and state that, from the observation of its several members, a belief 

 is entertained that most farmers of the state, who hope for success, 

 seem to expect it to come to them not onlj without careful attention 

 to their especial business, but with their attention divided and dis- 

 tracted by everything and anything outside of their farms which 

 comes under their notice ; and they continually suffer these outside 

 things to infringe upon the time which they, as reasonable men 



ou2;ht to devote to their farms. 



Your committee do not here intend to reflect upon the ability, nor 



general intelligence, nor shrewdness of the farmers of the state ; 

 for it is believed that most fiirmers, although they may hope for 

 succss, have but little faith in its attending their farming operations ; 

 which appears to be manifested by the great readiness with which 

 they seize upon weak promises of pay elsewhere ; by their almost 

 universal neglect of the farm when they have capital to invest ; by 

 the little interest they take in studying up the best methods of doing 

 all the different kinds of farm work, when compared with what they 

 manifest in any speculative scheme, or in the political movements or 

 wire pulling of the day ; by their want of zeal in their own cause 

 and their evident general disinclination to go into it with their heart 

 and their strength ; and their unwillingness to seek scientific knowl- 

 edge from the matured reasoning and practice of minds leading in 

 the direction they ought to pursue. It has suggested itself to the 

 minds of your committee to delineate, each one for himself, from his 

 own personal observation in those farming communities where he is 

 best acquainted with the actual condition of things, the picture pre- 

 sented by imagining the mechanics and manufacturers, the mer- 

 chants, physicians, lawyers and clergy of Maine giving to their re- 

 spective callings just the attention, — and no more, — that the farm- 

 ers of Maine give to their calling : the merchant confining himself 

 to the limited custom of his own town, and thinking only of turning 

 the odd half and quarter cent to his way of the trade ; the manu- 

 fiicturer constantly neglecting to allow his, or another's invention to 

 aid him to new machinery ; the minister of the Gospel refusing to 

 study any works of others because he might thus be accused of 

 obtaining his ideas from books : the mechanic working on by hand 

 as his fither worked and scorning steam as a motive power ; the 



