364 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Another, with an ambitious desire to further increase his 

 gains, and over-confident in his own judgment and forecast, 

 has ventured outside his legitimate calling to risk his money 

 and his credit in some flattering but delusive speculation, 

 only to find that both have gone " like the bubble on the 

 fountain — gone and forever." But cases like these which 

 have occurred in every community, productive of much dis- 

 tress, and exciting deep sympathy, are not to be cited to 

 prove farming unprofitable. Nor, too, is it to make against 

 our profession, if a farmer who is intemperate, lazy, thriftless, 

 or, as we Yankees say, " shiftless," comes to the hammer, 

 and goes to the bad. Any man in any business, with such 

 disqualifications, would come to nought. 



The rewards of agricultural labor in Massachusetts are 

 ample, in that an industrious, prudent man, with a fair start, 

 out of debt, may not only obtain, by skilful and careful farm- 

 ing, a comfortable subsistence, but his gains will prove so 

 much more than his real and reasonable wants, that, in ordi- 

 nary circumstances, he may early enter into the holy estate of 

 matrimony, rear and educate a family of children, have the 

 means of healthful and abundant comfort, exercise a liberal 

 hospitality, and lay up a competent provision against the 

 casualties of human affairs and the decline of life. Cases 

 like these are most common among us, and are the rule, 

 while the others are the exceptions. 



Agriculture, in the view of every political economist, is 

 the foundation of national wealth: it creates matter, and 

 gathers its productions, without injury or diminution, from 

 the exhaustless resources of the air and earth. 



Every agricultural production, therefore, is a direct creation 

 of so much additional matter. This, however, is not all : it 

 is not, as in manufactures, the mere using-up or transforming 

 of raw material ; but, under good cultivation, the soil itself 

 is put in a condition to become more productive, and the 

 land itself is raised in value in proportion to the increased 

 income which can be obtained from it. Labor thus applied 

 may be regarded as a sure and permanent investment of pro- 

 ductive capital. 



It is unfortunate that this investment does not alwaj^s 

 return the results hoped and expected, and especially that so 

 many of our people within the past forty years, dissatisfied 



