NEW ENGLAND HOME-LIFE. 61 



ishes the value of his own estate, but he diminishes the sell- 

 ing price of every farm in his neighborhood. I lately heard 

 a gentleman who has passed through Southern Berkshire 

 speak in raptures of the increasing beauty of this portion of 

 the county. All the property in the county is worth more 

 for the report that has gone abroad of the spirit of improve- 

 ment among the people. 



But some of the papers are saying that the number of our 

 homes is to diminish — that the hill towns of New England arc 

 to be deserted, and that great estates in the West are to 

 absorb the small ones, and the lordly owner is yet to have 

 his laborers around him as the southern planter once had his 

 slaves, or as the great manufacturer has his operatives. Such 

 men have studied to poor advantage the political economy of 

 fiirming, or the effects of our institutions. The farms in this 

 country average fifty acres less than they did twenty years 

 ago, and I venture to predict that twenty years from now the 

 average number of acres in each farm will be much less than 

 it is to-day. Large farms are profitable only while you can 

 rob the land. When the time comes that you must pay back 

 to your lands, these small farms become more profitable in 

 proportion than large ones. The larger a manufactory, the 

 more profitably the work can be done, as a general thing ; 

 but not so with farming when the land has to be kept good. 

 Just in proportion as you are compelled to transport fertil- 

 izers, and as laborers are compelled to go farther to their 

 work, do the profits of farming decrease. But, besides this, 

 the whole tendency of this age is for every man who works 

 on land to have land of his own. We have no law for entail- 

 ing lands, and the death of every great land-owner who 

 bought land when it was cheap, will be a signal for dividing 

 his estates, till each farm is only sufficient for the employ- 

 ment and support of a single family. And the number of 

 acres required for this will be less in proportion as you bring 

 the manufactures nearer to the farm, so that the farmer can 

 produce mixed crops and command a higher price for what he 

 sells and buj^ at cheaper rates. 



The world will not long carry products a thousand miles to 

 have them manufactured when they might just as readily be 

 manufactured near the place where they are needed for con- 



