50 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



vicinity of her cities and large villages and you will find 

 numerous rural homes owned generally by the occupants and 

 surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers and tasteful gardens. 



These are not the houses of the rich alone. A large ma- 

 jority belong to the middle and even the poorer classes. 

 There is not a spot on the continent where the people are so 

 well fed and so comfortably housed as in the "Old Bay State." 

 There is no spot on this beautiful earth where the poorer 

 classes are so well fed, so well clothed and so well to do in 

 all that confers comfort and happiness upon the individual. 

 There is no place where the laborer receives greater reward 

 for his toil, where he can enjoy so many blessings, free as the 

 air he breathes, as here in our own New England. Our 

 schools are free to all ; ignorance has no excuse, and the poor 

 shall not want. 



The character of a people may always be correctly judged 

 by their surrounding, and it is these influences that have made 

 us what we are — the most moral and the best educated, as a 

 whole, in the world. 



The spirit of our institutions being against large landed 

 proprietors, brings the difierent classes more closely into com- 

 munion of tastes and habits ; and a correct taste once formed 

 in a community, becomes difi*used through the whole, thus 

 elevating the whole mass. 



Let the political hucksters who are prowling up and down 

 the land, striving to create an antagonism between the laborer 

 and his employer, turn their attention to bettering the con- 

 dition of the honest poor in their home surroundings, and 

 they would confer a real blessing on the whole community. 

 Let them associate with others having capital : let them 

 secure lands in healthy locations, lay out streets and orna- 

 ment them with trees and shrubs and build neat and comfort- 

 able dwellings ; then let them take these men by the hand 

 and say to them, one of these homes can be yours if you will ; 

 industry, economy and sobriety will make them yours, and 

 they will open a fountain in that man's heart that has been 

 closed to its own interests by the ice of envy and jealousy. 

 The cry of these agitators is, "We must elevate labor." Yes, 

 but you must elevate the laborer first. You cannot raise the 

 stream above the fountain. 



