12 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



in New England, or even in the Middle States. It is easy 

 to understand why corn and wheat and flax can be grown 

 more profitably on the more fertile soil, and under the milder 

 skies of the West and South -West. The production of beef 

 and mutton on the rich pastures of Ohio and Illinois, is of 

 necessity more profitable than it is in the short pastures and 

 in the short summers and long winters of New Hampshire. 

 And competition in these branches of agriculture would be aa 

 absurd and idle on the part of a New England farmer, as it 

 would be for him to insist on rivalling the sugar and cotton 

 growers of the South. He must conform to the necessities 

 imposed upon him by soil, and climate, and markets, and the 

 opportunities enjoyed by more favored localities than his 

 own. But it does not follow that in doing this he is doomed 

 to destruction. Neither is it the part of wisdom for him to 

 adhere to the old system, however disastrous it may be, nor 

 to reject the new-, however prosperous. 



Every farmer knows that the profits of a f\irm depend not 

 on the number of acres cultivated, but on the amount pro- 

 duced from each acre to which his industry is applied. And 

 the same rule holds good with regard to a State or a cluster 

 of States. The signal for improvement on many farms has 

 been the abandonment of a large surface, and the adoption of 

 a smaller one, out of its aggregate tillage-lands. When we are 

 told, therefore, that the number of acres of cultivated land in 

 New Hampshire or Vermont or Massachusetts has decreased, 

 while the value of the crops has increased, we can simply un- 

 derstand that the law which applies to a single profitable 

 farm is applied to the general system of agriculture through- 

 out those States. And we should not be surprised that the 

 farmer should desire to be governed by the same rule which 

 directs the manufacturer in producing goods adapted to the 

 market he would occupy, or the merchant in his traffic in 

 those commodities which are adapted to his channels of trade. 

 I am not discouraged on this account, when I learn that, 

 while the articles to which I referred have diminished, those 

 peculiarly adapted to local markets, or to certain sections of 

 our lands, have increased largely, and these alone. The 

 oi-owth of tobacco in the valley of the Connecticut River is the 

 result of an active and vigorous ol^servance of this law by the 



