4 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



free and universal, our manufactures have become established 

 and advanced almost beyond the necessity of protection, and 

 our commerce reaches every country and people on the globe. 

 But as to agriculture, he said the high price of labor was out 

 of proportion to the price of commodities raised by the farmers, 

 so that the expenses absorbed all the profits, and he saw no 

 hope of a favorable change, and therefore he urged upon the 

 society, as a remedy,- to be " actively engaged in the inventing 

 and improving all instruments of husbandry calculated to save 

 labor." That was the advice of a sound and prophetic judg- 

 ment, from one who was then grappling with the difficulties of 

 agriculture, and it was coincident with the key-note which 

 sounded the onward march which has carried American agri- 

 culture to its present height of prosperity. 



IMPROVED CONDITION OP FARMERS. 



It is true that the merino sheep of that day have nearly dis- 

 appeared from your hills ; you could hardly to-day bring out 

 into grand procession so many yokes of oxen in a string as 

 your fathers did sixty years ago ; but you can trot out more 

 horses, with which you do quicker work ; you do not find it 

 profitable to raise beef, or to grow winter wheat ; you grow no 

 flax ; you weave not, neither do you spin ; yet your condition 

 is doubtless greatly improved ; you live in better houses, your 

 farms have better buildings ; you have improved machinery, by 

 which you can accomplish more with less manual labor ; your 

 families are more comfortably fed and clad, and better educated ; 

 you have a market for all your produce ; you ride in better 

 carriages, which nobody makes as good as you do, and you 

 drive faster horses, and you have learnt your own powers, what 

 your soil and climate are adapted for ; you have learnt the prin- 

 ciple of cooperation to produce larger and better results ; you 

 know how to select your stock, whether vegetable or animal, 

 for the special purpose you most desire, and you know that by 

 diligence and wisely directed effort there is nothing of the 

 genuine advantages of our advanced civilization which you 

 cannot avail yourselves of and appropriate as your own. 



GENERAL RESULT — COMMERCE — TRANSPORTATION, EAST AND WEST. 



The general result then, is, that both your manufactures and 

 your agriculture in sixty years have greatly advanced and 



