l50 Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the 



the crops produced, the greater the possibiUties and certainties of 

 future crops. Here there is no destruction save through neglect, 

 but wealth increasing with each harvest season. Dignify the in- 

 dustry and you dignify the man. It is because of these truths, 

 known but not made prominent, that quahty in men is insured 

 through kinship with the soil. The giant forces of the Almighty 

 so readily unlocked for the blessing of men, arouse the highest 

 and best, stir the deeper currents of thought and in their un- 

 folding insure that mental jar which is sure to provoke reor- 

 ganization of the gray matter of the brain and furnish food for 

 its higher development. The man who thinks is the man who 

 grows, and thoughts come only from contact with forces outside 

 ourselves which suggest greater possibilities. 



The years but confirm the conviction that New England 

 agriculture is waking to a great forward movement, one sure 

 to set it in the fore front of the industrial sections of this nation. 

 The swing of the pendulum is back towards the farms, the march 

 of machinery is sure to reconstruct methods and practices, swell 

 the volume of output and, rightly utilized, multiply revenue for 

 increased blessings. The homes are fast waking to the thrill of 

 the broader life, the standard of education gradually being modi- 

 fied as educational workers wake to a realization that the educa- 

 tion of the future for the masses is to be industrial rather than 

 classical, that a study of elementary agricultural principles 

 teaches observation and concentration and that to help the youth 

 of the land to observe and out of observation to know, and out 

 of knowledge to do, is the highest service of the present age. 



I should be recreant to duty if I left the impression that this 

 spirit of commercialism, this desire to reach greatest financial 

 results was the end and aim of this or kindred associations. We 

 seek revenue from our labors, and urge all the steps possible 

 by which that revenue can be increased, but God forbid that 

 this be the purpose of our lives. Dwarf a man to this conception 

 and he fails in the higher duties which, attach to every-day work. 

 There must be the striving for something just beyond the utiliz- 

 ing of what we hold within our grasp that we may reach and 

 secure something of greater value. The man whose every 

 thought centers in his dairy and who travels the little circle of 

 more cows more manure, more manure more grass, more grass 

 more cows, lives on the level of the tie-up and becomes, like the 

 man by the loom, a machine himself, simply adding so much 

 to the sum total of production. Such men are not builders ; they 

 live from the land, and dying, leave only stocks and bonds, 

 the poorest legacy one can bequeath. Great men alone do great 

 things and the measure of their greatness lies in the i)ictures they 

 paint, in impressions they leave, in examples they set and the 



