1884.] FAEM LABOR IN NEW ENGLAND. 99 



whose hearts were brave, and whose chief piirpose it was to render 

 to their employers a full equivalent for tllat which they were to 

 receive. Heroes, in that they shirked no duty imposed upon them, 

 and were faithful in every trust. They were content to labor from 

 sun to sun, and never dreamed of our modern day's work of ten 

 hours, and with muscle tough and trained to long endurance, could 

 swing the scythe, the axe, or the flail with wonderful dexterity, 

 and for their term of service identified themselves with their 

 employers' interests with conscientious fidelity, thus adding new 

 dignity to that labor which their fathers had made honorable, and 

 left to them as their chief inheritance. That was the heroic age 

 of muscle. Farm implements were few and rude, a single plow or 

 harrow, and these such as would be denied storage room in our 

 day, being required to do the work of our more complete and 

 varied implements, each designed for some special use. And the 

 rough work of these imperfect aids in farming were supplemented 

 by hand labor to an extent quite impracticable now. Many of us 

 can remember the annual tussle with the half turned turf of the 

 potato and corn field, or with the newly seeded fields of clover so 

 lodged and tangled as to have almost defied the mowing machine 

 itself. 



But this golden age of farm labor was suddenly terminated by 

 the war. The young men of New England left their plows in 

 their furrows, and sprang to the defence of the nation's life with 

 the same devotion to duty which I have called heroic. Then began 

 a marked decadence in farm labor, and a new era in New England 

 agriculture. The demands of war were imperative, and recognized 

 no claim upon the service of those who were able to perform its 

 duties, but its own. The tide of human life poured forth from 

 every city, town, neighborhood, and almost every family, to return 

 only with decimated ranks to the various employments which they 

 had left. Such a loss of labor could only result in a universal 

 adoption of new methods by which human force could be made 

 more efficient or dispensed with. And to the supply of this new 

 demand human ingenuity addressed itself with surprising readiness 

 and success. And in no department of labor was there a more 

 complete revolution in methods than in that of agriculture. The 

 ingenuity of man knows no limitations, excepting perhaps his 

 necessities, and new forces and new applications of old ones 

 quickly came to the farmer's rescue. Labor-savang machinery and 



