200 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



except to throw dust in the eyes of legislators at the passage of the 

 law ? If private property is taken for genuine public service, for 

 public water, a county house, a school or a grist-mill — the scarcest 

 public servant in our section — what occasion has the public for 

 paying fifty per cent, above its true value to its owner, where all 

 his circumstances are honestly and fairly taken into consideration 

 according to certain good points in this law ? That fifty per cent. 

 is an insult to the judge, commissioners, and all parties concerned, 

 and a scandal in the commonwealth. 



I would not abolish this law any more than I would abolish 

 beetles and wedges, or broad axes. Like these tools, a flowage 

 law is necessary. 



But these are powerful and may be dangerous tools in the hands 

 of unscrupulous men. I would surround them with a better edu- 

 cated society and common sense, as a restraint against hasty and 

 unwise action. I would teach our manufacturers that they of 

 all men, in the ups and downs of their bu iness enterprises most 

 need the safeguard of a conservative and prosperous farming com- 

 munity, developing naturally, in the old way of iSew England, into 

 manufacturers. It is not yet a fact in history that manufacturing 

 gets an enduring thrift by the ruin of agriculture, the destruction 

 of domestic art or the natural evolution and growth of farm and 

 family industries. On the contrary, it is generally true that the 

 happiest developments of manufacturing occur where the children 

 of the soil grow up to the full use and enjoyment of their heredit- 

 ary industrial rights and privileges protected by law and custom. 



Our flowage act as construed and put in force in the popular 

 mind of my neighbohood, brings farm lands under a sort of pre-emp- 

 tion — as Indian lands have been — to the first stake-driver who 

 comes along. Under its provisions an enterprising young man 

 went right out of our halls of legislation in March, and drove his 

 stakes in the most valuable grass land we had. They were plaguy 

 rough, pitch-pine stakes with nails in them, fit to smash, and did 

 smash both of our mowing machines, and put their drivers in 

 mortal terror of unseen snags where the grass was stoutest. We 

 need a little civil service reform there, Mr. Chairman ! I would 

 respectfully submit to whoever is in authority, that no flowage pe- 

 titioner need set any traps for man or beast, in seeing what he can 

 do on a peradventure. A sliver of sawed pine, painted white, and 

 no heavier than a peeled willow twig, is a sufficient mark in a 

 meadow for a surveyor's informal flowage lines. 



