302 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



find in our own State; and perhaps I ought not to say, Mr. Presi- 

 dent, it is a pleasant fact which I discover (for it ought not to 

 be pleasing), that you have here some, at least, of the discourage- 

 ments which we workers find in the State of Maine. There is a 

 common sympathy, and therefore I feel that it is not unbecoming 

 in me to say that 1 do feel pleased, in one sense, to find that you 

 have these discouragements. They are not insurmountable, and 

 you are taking the right steps (and that is another pleasant feature), 

 to overcome them. 



I have learned from the exercises here, from the addresses to 

 which I have listened, from the discussions and from the remarks 

 which have been dropped by individuals, that here in this State, 

 as in my own — and I think I may add, all through New England — 

 the social standard of the farmer, the social standard of farm 

 life, is not on that elevated plane upon which you here would be 

 glad to have it placed. I have felt this seriously in my own State. 

 There is a feature of the life of the farm in this direction which 

 is hard to meet; yet for this there is a remedy, and that remedy 

 lies within the reach of the farmers of Connecticut; and the well- 

 wishers of society on the farm, the well-wishers of society at 

 large, must not expect that any elevation in this direction is to be 

 attained, or any correction of this defect in our society is to be 

 remedied, without effort. We need never look for others to come 

 in and lift us up out of our present position, but we, by our own 

 efforts, if we will, can go 'to work and build ourselves up. I 

 learn, too, here, that your young men are prone to leave these 

 farms and flee away to other lands of promise. So, too, do we in 

 Maine meet this difficulty, and it comes home to me there, and the 

 same thought has been suggested to me here. Is there not, possi- 

 bly, Mr. President, a fault on our part in this direction, as well as 

 in the social direction? You are making efforts here in Connec- 

 ticut, as we are in Maine, to educate your young men — to educate 

 them in connection with, and in sympathy for, farm life. Special 

 schools are established for that purpose. We have had many 

 forms of special schools to fit our young men for professional 

 duties, and when they graduate from those schools, and step out 

 into professional life, are not those young men, in the esteem of 

 the community, placed in positions higher up in the social scale 

 than if they had never been schooled in those directions ? Do 

 they not start out in life from a higher plane, from the fact that 



