20 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



for current expenditures. It is not an easy task to cut down 

 the expenses of a city : too many people who vote, and do 

 not pay taxes, are interested in keeping them up. Even, 

 therefore, if no attempt be made to reduce the debt, the in- 

 terest account and the current expense account, to be annu- 

 ally provided for by taxation, will be sufficiently large to 

 add greatly in all our cities to the embarrassments of busi- 

 ness. Under these circumstances I do not expect to see the 

 population of the cities growing in the next few years, as it 

 has been growing now for several years, at the expense of 

 the farming-districts. Some cities and large towns will 

 continue to grow rapidly, no doubt ; but many will stop 

 growing, and some will suffer a decrease of their population. 

 Neither are the manufacturing villages likely to grow. The 

 manufacturing facilities are now largely in excess of the 

 public needs; and many that have been employed in this 

 kind of labor will be obliged to return to the farms. 



I expect, therefore, to see the business of farming rising 

 in the popular favor, to see the currents of population 

 tending, in many cases, away from the cities, and toward the 

 farms, to see the people that now till the land more con- 

 tented than they have been with their calling, and more 

 determined to excel in it, to put their brains and their 

 hearts into it, and to make the farmer's life not only a life 

 of plenty, but a life of culture and of beauty. Your greatly 

 improved machinery and methods relieve you of much of the 

 drudgery that was inevitable when I was a farmer's boy; 

 and your recent complaint of the lack of help — which, you 

 say, explains the fact that so many acres have been lost to 

 cultivation on these hills — will not be heard so frequently in 

 the near future ; for there are thousands of people in the 

 large towns who will be glad to work for you for reasonable 

 wages, after they have starved a little while longer. I wish 

 that you would put yourselves in communication with our 

 Union Relief Association in Springfield, and let us see if we 

 cannot work together in such a way as to furnish jon with 

 the help }' on need, and some of our suffering poor with labor 

 and a livelihood. 



With these improved facilities, and this better supply of 

 labor, we may not only look to see many of the farms of New 

 England, that have long been running to brakes and huckle- 



