472 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



That man himself, by pondorinjr. mipht divine 



All mysteries, and, iu due time, conceive 

 The varying arts whereby we have leave to live;— 



Yet even upon the grain fell plagues ere long, 

 Mildew defiled the stalks, and everywhere 

 The barbed thistles gathered in lawless throng, 

 Till villainous weeds displaced the harvest there 



Caltrops and cleavers, darnel, wild-oats forlorn, 

 Darkened the gracious glistening of the corn." 



Pliny lamented the decline of fertility of the land, and suggested the 

 cause to be the decline in the skill and intelligence of the farmer. The 

 cause was, "we have every reason to believe, that in those days the lands 

 were tilled b}- the hands of generals even, the soil exulting beneath a 

 plough-share crowned with wreaths of laurel, and guided by a husband- 

 man graced with triumphs; whether it is that they tended the seed with 

 the same care that they had displayed in the conduct of wars, and mani- 

 fested the same diligent attention in the management of their fields that 

 they had done iu the arrangement of the camp, or whether it is that 

 under the hands of honest men everything prospers all the better, from 

 being attended to with a scrupulous exactness. * * * But at the pres- 

 ent day these same lands are tilled by slaves whose legs are in chains^ 

 by the hands of malefactors and men with a branded face!" 



Our own country has had similar history. A hundred years ago, 

 Deane wrote of the agriculture of New England: "The alarming effect of 

 the present low state of husbandry is, that we are necessitated to import 

 much of our food and clothing, while we are incapable of making ])ropor- 

 tionate remittances in the produce of the soil, or in anything else." 



An English traveler wrote of us in 1801, that "land in America atfords 

 little pleasure or profit, and appears in a progress of continually afford- 

 ing less. * * * * Land in New York, formerly producing twenty 

 bushels to the acre, now produces only ten. * * * Little profit can 

 be found in the present mode of agriculture of this country, and I appre- 

 hend it to be a fact that it affords a bare subsistence. * * * Decline 

 has pervaded all the states." 



We dwell upon the time when presidents Avere taken from the farm 

 and returned to it with joy. We recall the beautiful rural simplicity 

 of Cincinnatus and the many noble Romans, and of Washington and; 

 Jefferson; and since these instances do not recur, w^e lament a decline. 

 We should remember, however, that the young Washingtons now go to 

 the city to learn a thousand things — alack, that some of the things ai-e 

 so little worth the learning — of which their elders never dreamed. There 

 was little else than the farm to which one might retire in those dayss. 

 In Washington's time, the trinity of opportunity lay in agriculture, the- 

 ology and war. The two first books u])0u American agriculture were 

 written by ministers. There seems to have been a decline in all these 

 worthy occupations, and books on agriculture are now written by cranks 

 and professors. 



It is really fallacious to compare the prosperity of this generation 

 with that of the one before it. The farmers of that time were happy 

 largely because they knew^ nothing better; now many of them are un- 

 happy because they cannot attain the things which are far beyond their 

 reach. My older hearers know that the amenities of the farmer's life have 

 increased a hundred fold within a generation. 



