MARKET GARDENING. 105 



uation, and is obliged to pay interest on the mortgage. The 

 back countiy farms, in my opinion, have too high valuations 

 placed upon them. I think the State has got to come to it, 

 and the quicker the valuation comes down upon these poor 

 farms within the reach of young men, the better. If it 

 don't, we want to give them up entirely. It is sometimes 

 said that the smartest boys, and all who have any spirit, 

 leave the farm. I do not know Avhere we should have been 

 but for the boys who had not spirit enough to go away, as 

 they say, or did not know enough to leave the farm. But 

 some of those bo3^s have managed to get along and get a 

 good living, and" when I look around me and see what has 

 become of some of my early associates, I think it was for- 

 tunate for me that I did not know enough to leave the farm. 



The Chairman. The practical experience that we are 

 receiving from practical men makes this meeting very inter- 

 estins:. I would call on Mr. Rawson of Arlinirton. 



Mr. Rawson, Senior. Mr. President, I would like to say 

 a few words, not confining myself to any particular topic. I 

 heard Capt. Moore speak of asparagus and other vegetables, 

 and the method of growing asparagus in old times, and said 

 that it could not be done now as they did it then and make 

 money. He went back twenty-five years. I set out a bed 

 of asparagus thirty-eight years ago. I set my plants a foot 

 deep, on very poor land, where they did well for a time, but 

 after a while they came out on top of the ground, so that it 

 was almost impossible to plough at all ; and in undertaking 

 to plough I pulled up the plants, and finally my bed was 

 small, and difiicult to cultivate, and I ploughed it up. 



I am sorry that I do not see more young men here ; most 

 of those present are men of mature years. This hall ought 

 to be full of young men ; they are the men who need the 

 experience of the old ones. But, as has been suggested, 

 perhaps the young men leave the farms, and many of them 

 have good reasons, in my judgment, for so doing ; that is, 

 they do not have the inducements held out to them by their 

 fathers that they ought to have. My son, at the age of 

 twenty, thought of leaving and going to Boston, thinking 

 that he was sroing: to better himself. I told him, " I will do 

 better by you than you can do by going to Boston and tak- 



