1882.] HOME MANUFACTURES. 201 



After driving his stakes, which, he thinks tantamount to a title 

 ah'eady, the rampant flowage petitioner proceeds to invite the own- 

 ers to trade. It is precisely like trading — this is the popular feel- 

 ing and apprehension — with a robber, who holds a pistol at your 

 head. The farmer must take the terms offered, or suffer the 

 chances of the court. 



No matter if you have a first rate dormant water power on the 

 same ground — one that your father has partly developed for your 

 benefit, and that you propose to improve in the old natural order 

 of righteous farm evolution for the benefit of your children, and 

 the community at large, the outrageous communism of this law, 

 misconstrued and misconstrued, as I believe, to the everlasting 

 disgrace of intelligent mechanics and agriculture both — may be 

 taken from you under a nominal damage with fifty per cent 

 added. 



Now, Mr. Chairman, and gentleman of the Connecticut Board 

 of Agriculture, although this talk in a certain narrow phase of it 

 is my business — a peculiar farm experience — I deny that it is alto- 

 gether my business. In a large sense, it is your business. It is a 

 public matter, covering the agriculture of this State — of every 

 New England State, I fear — and in prospect, perhaps, every new 

 and old state of the union. It is a new slave law involving hu- 

 man rights that we are putting in force. The interests concerned 

 are so immense, that my own individual interest sinks into noth- 

 ingness. Only by the fact of my being an eye-witness to infinite 

 public wrong in store for us, have I a right to raise a voice in the 

 matter. One farmer, more or less trodden, under the heel of cor- 

 porate despotism, is but another sparrow fallen to the ground. 

 "What need have I to ask you to take heed of such a trifle ? Is it 

 not written already in the inmost heart of humanity that little 

 things shall in no wise be forgotten ? 



But this I will ask you. Look well to your home manufactures. 

 Beware what manner of workmen your mills turn out. No manu- 

 facturer may safely walk through his mill and close his ears to 

 any jar or disagreeable sound among his machines. No citizen, 

 let alone a statesman, may safely turn away from the least injus- 

 tice. "We are all in the same boat. What hurts me hurts you. 

 "We were all shot down, and we all suffered death with President 

 Garfield ! "We shall all be tried and hanged let us hope, with the 

 assassin Guiteau! "Whatever our manufacturers do, or are hin- 

 dered from doing, is our own doing. 



