1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 273 



and should be met beforehand, as any other cash market is, by 

 well-planned and well-executed divisions of neglected farms into 

 snug and salable properties. Some of our old farm buildings are 

 scarcely habitable by decent people, and only fit to harbor ques- 

 tionable characters who may be expected to grow worse rather 

 than better under depressing and hopeless conditions. 



We should hate to see small farm industries worse ordered and 

 less thriving than the industries of prisons, jails, and reform 

 schools. 



Strange crimes and horrid reversions of humanity occur in 

 connection with agricultural neglect. Motives of policy, saying 

 nothing of any higher reasons, must soon induce us to turn a por- 

 tion of our reforming energies into the dark and sometime forgot- 

 ten corners of Connecticut civilization. 



As it is in the town, so it is in the country — the worst condi- 

 tions may exist in close proximity to such as are called the best. 



The French got mad once or twice and destroyed or tried to 

 destroy about every institution they had, causing infinite loss and 

 misery to society, and warning the middle and lower classes, so 

 called, all over the world to beware of lofty superstructures. 



It is said that land-holdings in France have been divided to the 

 extremist possible limit, and complaints are now frequent that 

 plots are too small. 



Great Britain has long been busy in a slower way with the same 

 class of questions. The British people, or British colonies and 

 commerce, have had to pay dearly for the civil war between 

 British " cotton " lords and landlords. We catch all the fevers 

 and rages that have a run abroad, and think of our abandoned land 

 now as never before. We can only save ourselves from wasteful 

 and bloody revolutions by constantly making, with a higher intelli- 

 gence and a tenderer conscience, the small but needful changes 

 which prevent revolutions. Frequent fit changes of policy are as 

 easy and restful as turning over in bed, so long as all hands under- 

 stand and approve them. 



While we have been skinning the West and South with all the 

 means we could scare up at home or import from the old world, 

 New England is growing up to woods. As we approach the end 

 of those wholesale depleting operations and begin to pick up our 

 agricultural crumbs in the East, we find the old lay-outs of land 

 and roads in many places unfit to match a new order of things or 

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