ESSEX COUNTY FARMERS. 15 



everywhere the farmhouses looked well, were well paiuted, 

 that the farm barus were kept in good condition, the cattle 

 well fed, that the farmers themselves, going to market with 

 their crops, always looked solid and substantial, and had a 

 good pair of horses with which to do their work. That I 

 found was the condition of affairs ; and so I learned that the 

 Essex County farmer had found out for himself how to culti- 

 vate the soil ; had passed away from that primitive mode to 

 which I alluded in the beginning, and accepting the situation, 

 had turned market-gardener, to occupy the local markets 

 which were constantly growing up here. 



Now, not only has Essex County done this for herself, but 

 she has indicated, gentlemen, the law of American farming. 

 You may look with envy upon the Western farmers who are 

 filling the markets with their grain-crops, with their cattle and 

 their hogs, — who supply the provisions that are used in the 

 Eastern States, and all the exports of grain and provisions 

 that are sent abroad, — you may look with envy upon them, 

 and you may say that the man in the Western States, with a 

 thousand or twelve hundred acres of land, engaged in this 

 wholesale business of producing a supply of articles for the 

 market, has really discovered the secret of prosperous farming. 

 But not so. He is continually subject to the great commer- 

 cial changes that are going on around him. He is at the 

 mercy of foreign competitors. When he sends his wheat 

 abroad he meets the wheat of the Black Sea, raised by men 

 who receive no reward for their toil, who have no civil obli- 

 gations, who have no expenses, who have no rights, have 

 no status either in the state or in society. They meet 

 grain raised by labor that costs next to nothing, and they, 

 as citizens of the United States, with all their obligations, 

 their duties, their desires, their ambitions, are compelled to 

 compete with them. If they send their wool to market from 

 Ohio, they meet Australian wool, grown almost spontaneously ; 

 they meet wool from the Cape of Good Hope, raised by men 

 who can hardly be distinguished from the sheep on whose 

 backs the wool is grown ; they meet wool raised in California, 

 where sheep are never housed. And so the great wool-pro- 

 ducers of the West are continually staggered and tormented 

 by the production of foreign wool with which they are to 



