NEEDS OF NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 65 



THE NEEDS OF NEW ENGLAND AGRI- 

 CULTURE. 



From an Address before the Housatonic Agricultural Society. 



BY GEORGE E. WARING. 



That which most interests the New England farmer of the 

 present day, is to know how he shall keep even with the world. 

 Not how he shall pay his bills at the end of the year and start 

 again from the point at which he started twelve months before, 

 and with a fair chance of standing twelve months hence where 

 he stands now ; — but how, as the world moves, he shall move 

 with it ; how he shall be in all respects as much better off at 

 the end of each year as the merchant or professional man is ; 

 by what means life is to be made easier, more civilized and more 

 human with him as it is with men of other occupations. He is 

 at least eager to know — if he is too old for much improvement 

 for himself — how he may secure the desired benefits for his 

 children. 



One thing he may understand at the outset : — what is called 

 the " good old way " will not help him. Indeed, if we meas- 

 ure it by its results we shall see that the good old way is a 

 very bad old way ; and we shall come to think that it is only 

 when a farmer comes out of the beaten track, and risks some- 

 thing, that he has a chance of being to the end of his days, 

 — anything but a sort of human ox, working in his daily yoke, 

 and chewing his daily cud of old-time ideas, — pulling on the 

 <' near " side or on the " off" as his father taught him to do in 

 the beginning, and as he has set his heart on doing forever- 

 more. It would be becoming in me, perhaps, to say, in defer- 

 ence to the class of which I speak, — and to continue a fiction 

 that is as old as farming itself, — that I have a profound respect 

 for the sturdy yeomanry on whose brawny shoulders rests the 



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