1882 ] HOME MANUFACTURES. 207 



humdrum events that a renegade Russian or German is of more 

 importance in the eye of the national or state government than 

 he is. 



There are several reasons why a manufacturer should wish to 

 flow the intervale rather than take the water of a stream upon his 

 wheel by canal. Where valuable eastern bottom lands have been 

 long depressed or kept at a standstill by western railway produce, 

 flowage is cheaper. A canal requires digging and banking at 

 fearful prices per yard as the cost of grading and excavation is 

 figured and sub-let by modern contractors. No matter if the land 

 in question has the greatest latent agricultural value if the owners 

 are in no condition to develop it. In periods of agricultural de- 

 pression and factory booms, they probably have no desire to do soi 

 So it may seem politic to a mill-owner to flow if he can ; partly 

 for the sake of acquiring valuable property, and by a view — more 

 or less dimly acknowledged in his own mind — for the purpose of 

 depressing agriculture still more in his neighborhood, and turning 

 the minds of ignorant people still more decidedly towards the 

 chances of labor in his mill. Level meadows make a capital basin 

 for a reservoir, you know, and to throw a wooden dam across the 

 narrows below is easy — a colony of beavers could do that — and 

 where our bottom lands are under water in the midst of a sandy 

 and gravelly country, no very enviable views of farming will be 

 seen from factory windows, especially during dry seasons like the 

 two last. 



Did it ever occur to you how a farmer feels who happens to own 

 a Naboth's vineyard that the king corporation of the day has its eye 

 on? He can't improve it any. His wife will tell him it is of no 

 use; his children will beg off from working there, and his neigh- 

 bors will laugh at him. The price of the land is fixed in the pub- 

 lic mind, and it is hung to the owner like a millstone. Supposing 

 it is ground that a great city wants to make a reservoir of. You 

 might suppose that a large body of people could easily chip in a 

 penny apiece and give the farmer enough at least to make him feel 

 that the whole world is not against him. But no. The people of 

 the city don't know anything about the matter, or they are taught 

 that farmers are "stingy, dogs in the manger, unp regressive, " and 

 so forth. City people are taxed enough, but the money is divided 

 between appraisers, contractors, and noisy, voting labor. Does 

 the press know ? Very little. The best farmer, the most precious 

 man to the state, is not a grumbler. He suffers in silence. This 



