NEED OF LEGISLATION. 209 



a pound of it, and also to retain some of it himself. I re- 

 ceived no reply to that letter. After that, within one month 

 of the present time, I proceeded to Worcester personally, to 

 see the gentleman, to see if he had received ray letter, which 

 I had no reason to doubt. He said that he received the 

 letter ; but, on making an examination, he found he had none 

 of it on hand. Prior to that time, the gentleman met me in 

 the street in Boston one day, and stated that he did not use 

 the fertilizer which he had received, on the crops for which 

 it was made ; but, at the same time, it had produced very 

 beneficial results. 



Now, this question of fertilizers lies at the basis of the 

 farming-interests, not only of Massachusetts and New Eng- 

 land, but of the "West, and throughout the whole country, 

 where the sentiments of Massachusetts have prevailed, where 

 our children have emigrated, and carried with them the same 

 habits in regard to farming that they followed here, impover- 

 ishing the soil by a long system of cultivation. Not long 

 since, as you all know, we raised wheat in New England ; 

 after that, wheat-cultivation was pursued in the Genesee 

 Valley in New York, where they raised as fine wheat as was 

 raised in the world. That time has gone by ; and now we 

 look to Minnesota, California, and other Western States, to 

 produce the grain that we ought raise ourselves. 



This question of fertilizers has not been met ; and the 

 legislators whom you send to your legislative halls are 

 the ones to blame, and you cannot expect any thing more, 

 unless the farmers of Massachusetts put their shoulders 

 to the wheel, and have right, just, and proper legislation 

 in regard to these things. I agree perfectly with what 

 some of the gentlemen said here, — that what we want is to 

 have proper legislation. I refer to what was said in regard 

 to night-soil, and the sewage of the city of Boston. In the 

 town where I reside there is a State institution, with one 

 hundred and forty pupils. A portion of my land lies directly 

 across the road. They wanted sewerage for those premises for 

 all their night-soil and their washings ; and they ofi'ered to 

 build a cesspool large enough to contain the whole of it, and 

 lay their drains, and give me the whole of it for nothing. I 

 would not take it as a gift, and take care of it. All of you, 

 perhaps, with scarcely an exception, may disagree with me. 



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