198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



fit to make a wood-chopper's eye leak. He said it might take him 

 a day to finish it, and he didn't want to sell it because, I presume, 

 he thought I didn't want to give its value. To trust to, for going 

 into the woods for a day's chopping, I dare say it was really worth 

 more than a dozen of the average machine helves in market. I sug- 

 gested to the artist that he could do well with bis eye for timber, 

 and might serve the public too by setting up an eccentric lathe to 

 work tough rived hickory by John Allen's pattern. 



Now when we talk of encouraging home manufactures, do we 

 mean at our own house or at everybody's house ? The latter is 

 my idea of home manufactures. If a boy on a Connecticut farm 

 shows a taste for tools give him a chance to use them, right at 

 home. When he gets big enough, let him knock up a little shop 

 or a little mill in the old way close by home. His father's farm 

 may be fifty years back in the woods, but it is fifty times easier 

 building a mill there, or anywhere in Connecticut, than it was 

 fifty years ago. No matter if the shop or mill does not consume 

 all his time. He can spin or weave or knit or make buckets a 

 part of the time, and farm or garden a part of the time as his 

 grandparents did. Connecticut was once especially famous for her 

 handy men. Now the man who can turn his hand to whatever is 

 necessary to be done is the scarcest man in New England, and he 

 is especially scarce upon Connecticut farms, because we have 

 allowed our diversified farm and family industries to be wrecked. 

 The only way for a boy to determine what he can do best is to try 

 many things. It may be for my profit, if I hire him, to give him 

 a one-sided development and keep him at that one thing which I 

 can make the most money by, but it is not always the best thing 

 for the boy or man, because industries will break, and the opera- 

 tive who is only part of a machine is liable to be counted out with 

 the pieces of his broken machine. 



Every person of experience knows the value of a diversified 

 industry. The Rev. Mr. Hatch of West Hartford lays great 

 stress upon this point in his Thanksgiving sermon printed in IVie 

 Farmer. Unless we have more than one article of produce or 

 manufactures to sell, we are very liable to come to grief. We 

 have scarcely a manufacturer who does not try to secure himself 

 against the competition of farming by cultivating the land for 

 himself. We should have scarcely a farmer who does not try to 

 secure himself against loss and disaster, by attending to the 



