58 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



its upward progress, is agriculture — tJie g^^eat producer of food 

 and raw materials. At every upward step agriculture must 

 be raised to the greatest efficiency possible. And this can be 

 done only by linking it to all the other great industries of the 

 world. They are perfect only as they form a system. They 

 can no more be separated than the system of the body can be 

 separated. The extent to which we do thus link them 

 together will measure our civilization, for civilization ad- 

 vances just in proportion as man avails himself of all the 

 forces of nature, and pushes his energies into every field 

 of productive labor and every field of thought. The whole 

 world, physical, mental and moral, is given to man for 

 his inheritance, and he will never reach his highest estate 

 till he cultivates each of these fields in due proportion. To 

 do this most successfully it has been found that within 

 certain limits a division of labor is necessary, as in the 

 human body, which is one, the hand and eye and ear, have 

 each their appropriate work. Division of labor gives skill by 

 constant practice in a single direction, and makes one man 

 dependent upon another, which tends to peace and good fel- 

 lowship in society. But when it is carried too far, it simply 

 transforms a man into an efficient machine, and has a ten- 

 dency to destroy a full development of character. There are 

 workmen who can only make heads to pins, or the twenty- 

 fourth part of a steel-pen. This is their work, year in and 

 year out. There are scientific men even, who have grown 

 scientifically small and weak in studying science, because they 

 judged it necessary to give their whole powers to a single 

 line of investigation. Theoretically they seemed to be right, 

 but practically they were wrong, because they left out of sight 

 this great truth, — that God never made a man to prosper, in 

 the fullest sense, by the neglect of any of his powers. 



Ruskin has graphically described the dwarfing influence of 

 that division of labor which complicated machinery and the 

 competition of modern mechanical skill too often demands. 



"We have much studied and much perfected of late," he 

 says, "the great civilized invention of a division of labor; 

 only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the 

 labor that is divided, but the men. Divided into mere seg- 

 ments of men, broken into small fragments and crumbs of 



