36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



field of acquisition was extended more rapidly, or was taken 

 so generally, that it developed with greater rapidity than the 

 field for the market for the disposal of the product. 



Farmers still continued, for a short time, to grow practically 

 about the same quantity of wool, but it was not long before 

 isolated instances developed where the husbandman found, 

 that the maintenance of the few sheep that had formerly been 

 necessary to produce the wool for his clothing, did not nick 

 well with the economic administration of his affairs. More- 

 over, the manufacturing enterprises of our State were practi- 

 cally in their infancy, and the consuming population was not 

 of such dimensions as to cause or lend any assistance of any 

 importance to the phase of meat production as a source of 

 revenue in sheep husbandry. The result of which was that 

 within a decade or two following this movement, the whole 

 progressive school of farmers soon realized that it had become 

 more economical to relegate the manufacture of homespun 

 material to the factories and buy cloths, thus utilizing the 

 energy heretofore required in this production in further avenues 

 affording greater remuneration. Thus the sheep industry of 

 New England naturally decreased, and the keeping of sheep 

 was gradually abandoned from farm to farm, until through- 

 out Connecticut the industry practically declined into utter 

 insignificance as an agricultural enterprise, compared with its 

 importance at the opening of the century. 



During the next thirty years, from i860 to 1890, two great 

 economic changes took place, which restored the sheep hus- 

 bandry again to the class of possibly profitable agricultural 

 enterprises in Connecticut. One of the changes has been 

 caused by the rapid increase of our consuming population, 

 which has very materially stimulated the demand for meat, 

 compared with that existing in the days of former prosperity 

 in the sheep industry, while the other is the very great shrink- 

 age which has taken place in land values throughout the greater 

 portion of Connecticut. The latter condition was brought 

 about largely by the extensive railroad development, and par- 

 ticularly that in the western States. This has had a most 

 depressing influence upon agricultural values in Connecticut, 

 so that today thousands of acres are lying idle, and are nomi- 

 nally of such insignificant value that it is hardly necessary to 

 establish ownership and title thereto. 



