28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Massachusetts, if you give that direction to your efforts, more, 

 perhaps, than you have hitherto done, than if you confine your- 

 selves simply to the promulgation of recipes for doing certain 

 kinds of work. To my mind, what New England agriculture 

 especially needs is not so much to know when, and how, and 

 what it shall plant, as to know ivhy it plants, how what it plants 

 grows, &c, in what manner it may be made to grow better, to 

 grow with the least injury to the soil, most in conformity with 

 the needs of the community, and therefore the most profitable. 



I am an unmitigated high farmer ; if I were not, I would go 

 West ; I would go to some place where labor is worth two and 

 a half or three dollars a day, and where land can be bought for 

 a dollar an acre, where an immense amount of skinning could 

 be done, and a certain profit would accrue, without reference to 

 the condition in which I might leave the land. That is not my 

 view. I do not believe that that sort of cultivation will, in the 

 end, give me more money, more comfort, more satisfaction, and 

 certainly not more intelligence. I believe that the best field in 

 America for any intelligent farmer is right here in New England, 

 close by great communities, who must be fed with crops brought 

 from long distances, and where intelligent men, who come in 

 advance of the high cultivation that is sure to follow in a 

 few years, will get the benefit of the very high prices. As an 

 instance, it is a part of my business to grow cabbages, and this 

 city of Fall River is one of my principal markets. Fall River is 

 supplied with cabbages that come from New Jersey. The men 

 who grow them there grow them very intelligently, spend an 

 immense amount of money in preparing their land, and make a 

 great deal of money by it. Before they sell their cabbages, they 

 must load them on their wagons, carry them across the river, 

 paying ferriage, deliver them to the commission merchant, who 

 stores them away in his place, paying for the unloading and 

 stacking up. The commission merchant charges a commission 

 of 12J per cent, for the sale. He sells them to a wholesale 

 merchant, of Providence, who pays cartage and freight, and 

 cartage again, to get them to his own store, barrels them up, 

 carts them to the " Bradford Durfee," which takes them to Fall 

 River ; and here they are sold to a dealer. That dealer will 

 gladly give me the same price for cabbages, out of my own 

 wagon, that he gives for those delivered from the boat. So that 



