10 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



corporate capacity, to swell the volume of indebtedness up to 

 the time of the crisis produced by the failure of Jay Cooke & 

 Co., it is difficult to judge of the immensity of the ruin. 



But here are the agriculturists of the country, with their 

 capital invested in their lands and barns and houses, unim- 

 paired, and with prices for all the products of the soil, and 

 the farm fully up to an average of any ten consecutive years, 

 excepting always years of an abnormal character. Men 

 dealing in merchandise, who jDcrhaps at times have been 

 envied in their apparent prosperity, now compromise with 

 their creditors by paying a fractional part of their liabilities. 

 Manufacturers, whose wealth rapidly increased by sudden 

 and groat demand for their goods, now find the high price of 

 labor which the unusual demand established, the high rates of 

 insurance and interest money on a large stock of made up, 

 unsalable goods, and on a large investment in buildings and 

 machinery, eating up, not only the profits of former days, but 

 the capital invested in the original business, and are ol)liged 

 to borrow money to bridge over an uncertain period of time, 

 which without an ability to borrow would precipitate ruin. 



Dealers in city and town lots have also shared in this great 

 depreciation, and in New York City the shrinkage in real 

 estate has l)een from thirty to thirty-three per centum. 



During all this time, the agriculturists of the country have 

 not only stood their ground, without failures, without bank- 

 ruptcy, but with an absolute net gain. They have heard the 

 noise of the shock of the great contest ; they have seen 

 speculators, bankers, merchants, manufacturers falling to 

 the right and the left, as reason was restored and the ability 

 of men to pay their promises Avas scrutinized ; and they, 

 almost alone, as a class, have escaped injury, and, I might 

 add, inconvenience. 



It was so in the long deijression of business from 1837 to 

 1842. It was so in the great depression which preceded the 

 famine in Ireland, when the surplus products of American 

 agriculture gave employment not only to American but 

 foreign vessels, and brought back in return from Europe the 

 o'old and silver which the extravagance of the American 

 people had sent abroad in exchange for silks, laces and fine 

 cloths. It is no new thing for a nation to be saved b}^ its 

 intelligent, industrious agriculture. 



