318 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



tures that went on in every houseliold. The laws of trade and 

 commerce, and the sentiments regulating them, were such that 

 there could he no such wide commerce in agricultural productions 

 as we now have. 



The methods of the farm were all different then from now. In 

 all olden times the tillage of the crops rather than the methods of 

 gathering them occupied most of the thought and care. For ex- 

 ample, in Ellis's Husbandry (London, 1750), everything relating 

 to clearing the soil, plowing, harrowing, sowing, preparing the 

 seed, and tilling the crops is dwelt upon at very great length. 

 Chapter after chapter is devoted to these subjects; but in all the 

 eight volumes, there is not one chapter, — not a page, on the best 

 methods of harvesting the cereals or threshing them. Now, it is in 

 the gathering of crops and preparing them for markets, and in 

 transporting them, that the greatest advances have been made by 

 modern invention. 



In my Report to the Census Bureau, on the production of cere- 

 als in this country, I have discussed at length the causes which 

 have made American farming exceptional, and how it came that 

 in this country there has been such a development of agricul- 

 tural machinery. This I will not repeat here, suffice it to say that 

 this has been the only country in which agriculture has been abso- 

 lutely free, politically and entirely respectable, socially. The only 

 one where the land has had to bear no special burdens, nor did its 

 possession convey any special privileges, where it could be freely 

 bought and sold by anybody, and where farming was as respect- 

 able as any other vocation. "Whether a man pursued farming, or 

 some other business, was a matter of taste and not of social rank 

 or political privilege. There were places, where for a time, the 

 ownership of real estate affected the right of suffrage, and in 

 early days there were sometimes enactments compelling the culti- 

 vation of grain for fear of famine, and embargoes were sometimes 

 placed on grain ; but all this passed away long ago, and has had 

 no effect on our agriculture during the last fifty years, which in- 

 cludes the periods of greatest changes. During this time, our 

 agriculture has been perfectly free to adapt itself to conditions of 

 soil, climate, and competition, untrammelled by unfavorable land 

 laws, by social or class pressure, or by political repression. 



Under the conditions existing in this State, down to well into 

 the present century, New England grew her own bread-stuffs, for 

 her population as it then was, and as people then lived. 



