AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



STABILITY OF AGRICULTURE. 



From an Address before the Worcester Agricultural Society. 



BY DANIEL NEEDHAM. 



Looking around you to-day, you see your lands almost as 

 verdant as in the month of June ; the fruits of your harvest 

 filling barn and store ; your cattle thrifty and in excellent 

 condition ; and your homes happy and abundantly supplied, 

 not only with the necessaries, but the luxuries, of civilized 

 life. 



But as you cast your eyes from your agricultural to the 

 manufacturing districts, you find the water low in the rivers 

 and streams that turn the wheels in the heretofore busy mills, 

 and the owners making no complaint ; they are willing, in 

 fact glad, that it is so, for it gives them an opportunity to 

 diminish the supply of manufactured goods, which already 

 are piled high in the warehouse and the factory, and for 

 Avhich there is no demand. 



You find an uprising of hundreds and thousands of idlers, — 

 men, women and children ; some almost on the verge of 

 starvation, — either unable to get work, or refusing to work 

 on reduced time or at reduced wages. 



Looking still farther, you find merchants in New York, 

 Chicago, Boston, Baltimore — everywhere throughout the 

 country — feeling the depression of business to an extent not 

 experienced before by men of this generation, with salaried 

 clerks who are earning them no money, with large rents 

 which are eating rapidly into their capital, with debts due 

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