34 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



my friend, that fifteen per cent, "is lying around loose" 

 somewhere, and you had better ransack the nooks, crannies 

 and by-ways of your business until you bring it out to the 

 light. There is a range in the per cent, which farm-lands 

 will pay in different hands, management, and under varying 

 circumstances. I know of lands in this valley which are pay- 

 ing all the expense of their cultivation and a hundred per 

 cent, on the capital ; and there are some which are held, but 

 not farmed, and are so treated that Nature herself is foiled 

 in her attempts to produce crops which pay anything. lu 

 the latter case it is neither the fault of the land nor the busi- 

 ness, but entirely that of the owner, for there is but little 

 land east of the Alleghanies but what if left entirely to itself, 

 without thought care, or oversight of the owner, would yield 

 him six per cent, and taxes by the growth of wood. These 

 considerations lead to the settled conviction that farming pays 

 the individual in dollars and cents for all the intelligence and 

 labor he gives it. Statistics (which I will not take your time 

 to quote) prove, conclusively, that of every hundred persons 

 who engage in trade, more than ninety fail. But of persons 

 who engage in fiirming, and do not meddle with outside 

 business, not one in a hundred is ever bankrupt ; and a 

 hundred young men, taking farming as their business, will 

 aggregate more wealth than a hundred in any other business. 

 With the former the aggregate will be pretty evenly divided, 

 each will have a competence, but with the latter the aggregate 

 of wealth will be divided among a very few, and a great 

 majority will obtain but a bare livelihood. 



But dollars and cents, however desirable and useful, are 

 not the whole of life. There are some things desirable and 

 useful, and which juoney cannot purchase, which are inherent 

 in the ftirmer's occupation and a part of his reward, which 

 should be taken into the account. From his position and the 

 nature of his occupation, he is exempt from the whirl of ex- 

 citement and corroding cares of the moneyed and commercial 

 world. He is measurably free from their fluctuations, panics 

 and disasters. The blessed comforts of stability and security 

 are his when revulsions come upon most pursuits, and stock 

 and mercantile fortunes disappear as the dew. Of the whim, 

 caprice and fashion which often thwart the best-laid plans of 



