78 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



freights cheap. The mechanic can make the furniture or the 

 dress of the Illinois farmer, and yet he will receive more 

 bread in return than his labor on his own soil will produce ! 

 Beef can be raised in more favored climates without the ex- 

 pense of building and labor of wintering. New England can 

 be fed and pay the debt by skill and industry more easily 

 than by working her reluctant soil. This exchange depends 

 on conditions beyond the control of education ; and had our 

 efforts in that direction for the last thirty years been less, 

 our agricultural interest would have followed in the same 

 direction. 



Deserted farms, half-made clearings, tenantless cabins on 

 the frontier, cannot hold education responsible till war has 

 had its due meted out. Loss in native labor must have the 

 gain by improved methods and means accredited to it. De- 

 crease in tillage-land is offset by better tillage nearer the 

 consumer. Decrease in land-value of farms remote, is bal- 

 anced by increased values near to the large towns. These 

 changes are consequent upon new modes of life and new 

 means of carrying on our industries, and the disparity against 

 one or another section is more apparent than real. We need 

 not fear them on the gi'ound of too much intelligence. An 

 educated people will meet them better than an ignorant one. 

 Agriculture, like any other kind of industry, will be best 

 done by the most enlightened people. Its future may be un- 

 like the past, but can scarcely be less mportant. The fertility 

 and cheapness of Western lands, together with the simplicity 

 of the early settler's life, gives the maximum of products at a 

 minimum of expense. Increased cost of lauds, diminished 

 fertility, more luxurious modes of living, higher rates of tax- 

 ation in the West, will soon begin to tell in favor of the New 

 England farmer. 



Our moss-brown hills may be covered again with the forest, 

 and our sandy plains grow up with the pine, and our agricult- 

 ure concentrate on the better lands nearer the centres of pop- 

 ulations, and still we may not suffer from the change. If 

 nature has decreed that the Western farmer shall be keeper 

 of the bread-room, and weigh us our loaf, we must tell him 

 how his sittinu-room shall be furnished. If our education 



