100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



improved implements of every sort found a market waiting for 

 them, and almost before the iron had cooled were in use every- 

 where. Muscle as the prime factor of success in farming began to 

 lose its supremacy and brain became the leading force, so that 

 intelligence, more than physical strength, is now the chief require- 

 ment upon the farm. 



There is no danger, however, that the hand will not be needed, 

 as before, though it is being relieved of much of its severest labor. 

 The danger lies in just the opposite direction. There is, I think, 

 a growing tendency to depend too much upon the improved 

 machinery upon the farm as a complete substitute for hand labor. 

 Divorce muscle and brain, and we must pay the penalty of con- 

 troverting a great law of nature which binds the two together. 

 Both our own labor and that which we employ should be gener- 

 ously supplemented with improved farm implements, but there is 

 a limit to the profitable employment of labor-saving machinery. 

 I have seen men riding over their fields who could much better 

 afford to walk, for the simple reason that their luxurious farm 

 carriages were too expensive for their means. I do not forget 

 that the quality of farm labor has depreciated to such an extent as 

 to make such extravagances somewhat more excusable, for it is as 

 marked as the diminution of skilled laborers. The farm labor 

 market is now mainly supplied from foreign lands. This class of 

 laborers are generally unskilled, and yet we have no recourse but 

 to employ them and do the best we can with such labor. In very 

 many instances their inefficiency is owing wholly to our different 

 methods, but to teach them to do our work in our way is often dis- 

 couragingly difficult. 



This, then, is the dilemma in which the New England farmer 

 finds himself. With unskilled labor alone available to him, and 

 even this demanding a high rate of wages, with the rich and 

 boundless West as his competitor in all markets, and with a soil 

 now so worn as to require almost ruinous expenditures for fertiliz- 

 ing material, he is to manage so as to make both ends meet. The 

 result is, he is on the alert to try almost anything which holds out 

 a fair promise of relief from such a case, whether it be tobacco, 

 or beet sugar, or (if it were not for the presence here of some for 

 whose opinions upon most subjects I entertain the most profound 

 respect, I would say) ensilage. The problem before him is not an 



