6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUEE. 



South, owing to the debilitating influences of the heat, are in- 

 capable of competing successfnlly with operatives at the East, 

 and the inhabitants of rich and productive agricultural regions, 

 like those of the South or West, cannot be induced to perform 

 the continuous labor which is required in the shops. As man 

 is constituted, if the climate where he lives is congenial for 

 out-of-door pursuits, or if land is plenty and cheap and he can 

 obtain an easy living from it, he will never voluntarily submit 

 to the constant labor and fatigue of the shops as an occupation 

 for life. 



The correctness of these propositions is not to be tested by 

 the results of single experiences covering brief periods of time, 

 because so subtle and various are the operations of causes, that 

 it is impossible to determine correctly, from a few instances 

 alone, how far exceptional influences may have affected the 

 results they seem to prove. To arrive at even an approxi- 

 mately correct conclusion from results of experience alone, 

 Ave must select a long period of time, collect the details and 

 results under the diflerent circumstances of the period, and by 

 a process of generalization bring them all to bear upon the 

 decision to be made. 



The fact that within the last few years the people of the 

 South and of the West have turned their attention more than 

 ever before to manufacturing industries, does not prove that 

 the propositions I have above stated are erroneous. The cir- 

 cumstances of the country, since the close of the war, have 

 been exceptional. The duties on imported goods have been 

 higher than ever before, the demand for manufactured articles 

 has been large and the profits great, so that, for the time, 

 manufacturing may have been remunerative under circum- 

 stances fiir less favorable than those which aflect the people of 

 New England. 



Under ordinary circumstances, prices of manufactured arti- 

 cles, from competition between maiuifacturers, will be such 

 that the profits on the capital employed will be in proportion 

 to the j^rofits on capital employed in other pursuits. And as 

 labor enters largely into the cost of manufactured articles, if 

 one section of the country has advantages in labor not pos- 

 sessed by the others, these advantages, other circumstances 

 being the same in all, will inevitably in time give to it a 



