6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



unharvested, either because its value was not equal to the cost 

 of harvesting, or because of sickness or impossibility of pro- 

 curing labor. 



On the other hand I have known cases where the net profits 

 of the first crop of wheat paid the purchase money of the land. 

 I have again seen wheat sell for twenty-five cents per bushel, 

 and flour for three dollars per barrel, and cured bacon in the 

 hands of the merchant at two and a half cents per pound ; of 

 course the producer lost his labor. Again I have known wheat 

 produced at the rate of thirty bushels to the acre, selling at a 

 net profit of two dollars the bushel. Many a poor farmer, on 

 the contrary, I have known to be sold out under a mortgage 

 foreclosure for purchase money, and I have seen the largest 

 farmer in the Western States go into bankruptcy. These are 

 some of the exceptions, but there is no sort of doubt that the 

 fluctuations of fortune are much greater among the farming 

 population of the West than among the same class in New 

 England. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMERS NOT TO BE DISCOURAGED. 



I have therefore to say to you, if you have a soil whose 

 native fertility lias apparently long since been exhausted by 

 saveral generations of cropping, and though you have long and 

 severe winters, be not discouraged. You have not so much 

 arable soil in proportion to area, but what you have contains 

 more latent qualities of fertility, probably, than the soils of the 

 West. The average yield of farm products per acre, both in 

 quantity and value, of New England farms, actually exceeds 

 those of the Western States, excepting only the virgin States of 

 Kansas and Nebraska. The average yield of wheat per acre in 

 New England exceeds that of all the Western States taken 

 together, including Kansas and Nebraska. Take all the States 

 of the Union together, and as compared with them, the average 

 yield per acre of New England farms is in still greater excess. 

 The Southern States grow cotton and some of them rice and 

 sugar ; but except in the northern parts, and in portions of 

 Texas, they can't grow corn, or wheat, or grass. They thought 

 cotton was king because it entered largely into foreign exchange. 

 But the butter crop of the Empire State of New York in 18G5, 

 was twice as valuable as the cotton crop of the Empire State of 



