202 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



In my eleventh year I went into a mill and worked for a shil- 

 ling a day gladly ; and I have been in and out of our mills ever 

 since. You may or may not believe that I love them, and would 

 be glad to work with the best men in them. But as the best 

 managers are not, neither am I blind to their faults. They have 

 not changed human nature. They are not and never have been 

 our sole or only means of salvation. There is nothing about the 

 discipHne of mill-owning more than of farm-owning to prevent the 

 abuse of unlimited power and wealth. It is the binding effect of 

 justice to all classes which holds the social world together. Un- 

 less the perfect class bricks we are now making are, held together 

 by the mortar of truth, and justice, between man and man, we 

 shall build nothing better than babels and end with confusion of 

 tongues. 



Look you. What has been the main source of our present 

 spurt of prosperity ? Nothing but the fact of our having millions 

 of acres of fertile lands within railway reach. Nothing but the 

 fact of our having so many hundreds of thousands of picked 

 laborers ready to step upon our shores. Nothing else but these 

 two things spared us from a most dismal time of gathering up and 

 saving the pieces after our civil war. Are these fortunate inci- 

 dents anything for us to be particularly proud of ? Rather ought 

 we not to be ashamed that we have done no better with our 

 unparallelled advantages ? 



This bit of luck should not make us forget possible — yes, immi- 

 nent future mischances. This good fortune of ours should not 

 blind us to the ill fortune of our neighbors. Is not the rim of 

 every humming city and village grinding, like hades among the 

 wreck of abandoned and depopulated farms ? Has not the draft 

 of wit and muscle for our valley improvements left whole districts 

 in the neighboring hills with a look as though a blast of fire or 

 dry rot had swept the country ? Are not our dirty streams and 

 worthless forests fished and hunted by vagrant sportsmen ? Are 

 not our institutions of reform crowded with too healthy boys and 

 girls, while schools of whales by the million go unfished for, and 

 thousands of tons of our produce and merchandise float under 

 foreign flags ? Are not far too many of the boys and girls of the 

 farm debauched by the lax morals and dissolute habits engendered 

 by sudden wealth ? We were growing a frightful pauper list, 

 while the sons of too busy mill-owners and speculators were spend- 

 ing the income of townships. 



