EDUCATED FARM LABOR. 67 



EDUCATED FARM LABOR. 



From an Address before the Hampden Society, Oct. 3, 1856 



BY OLIVER MARCY. 



You, the farmers of Hampden County, have a great, a good, 

 a vital object to secure. How will you secure it ? I answer, 

 the only possible way is by educated labor applied to the 

 soil. I do not mean that to farm profitably, a man must be 

 educated in Latin and Greek, but in farming, for farming is a 

 science of the most comprehensive character, and though the 

 most ancient, the least developed of all sciences. But here I 

 encounter a doubt among you. " Book learning is worth 

 nothing," say you. " Any man that knows any thing may 

 know how to farm," and " education won't pay." Education 

 will pay, — the more intelligent the laborer, the more' profitable 

 the labor. 



Sir Charles Lyell, some dozen years since, in giving a 

 description of a Lowell factory and its operatives, states that 

 he wishes his English readers distinctly to understand, that the 

 stockholders made a good profit, else they might be tempted to 

 infer from his description, that the operatives were only gentle- 

 men and ladies, playing at factory. These operatives are 

 chiefly young women, educated in the common schools of Ver- 

 mont and New Hampshire, and the mills which they operate 

 compete successfully with similar establishments of England, 

 though the English manufacturer pays but half the wages for 

 his uneducated help. 



American vessels, commanded by captains and mates, raised 

 in intelligent New England society, and educated in our free 

 schools, command not only higher rates of freight, but in all the 

 ports of the world are preferred by importers and exporters, 

 at these higher rates, to the vessels of any otlier nation. That 

 the cause of this is the superior education of our commanders 

 and men, we have the opinion of Englishmen tliemselves. 

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