THE ROTATION OF THE FARM. 379 



midst of the Reign of Terror many of the gentle born, who could 

 not escape from the bloody French cities, hid in garrets or other 

 penetralia, and kept body and sonl together by making lace or 

 decorating fans or tapestry; for there was always, it seemed, 

 somebody to buy the yield of fripperies. As long as anything 

 can be produced upon them there should be no abandonment of 

 farms in the vicinity of markets. 



We might note, too, that this curious phenomenon of " aban- 

 doned " farms in Massachusetts is seen to be further complicated 

 by the fact that it occurs — if it occurs at all — in the face of the 

 extraordinary efforts of that noble State for the educational, the 

 agricultural-educational, betterment of her sons in her agricul- 

 tural colleges. And, still more suggestively, it appears to the 

 reader of this pamphlet that the Massachusetts farms now " aban- 

 doned/' or sought to be abandoned, are actually nearer to natural 

 markets or to adequate markets for their produce than any better 

 lands, however served by competing railroads, can possibly be. 

 Nor do I think that the cheap " long haul " which might be sup- 

 posed to bring the "Western prairie into competition with the New 

 England farm will be found to have that effect. The haul is too 

 long and not cheap enough to make the large difference necessary 

 to any such theory. Statistics need not be quoted, surely, to show 

 that the great cities of the Atlantic debouch some thousands untold 

 of their population for at least a third — for certainly a quarter — of 

 the year, into the vicinity of these very markets ; or that the great 

 transoceanic facilities — the huge steamships with their abridged 

 transits which have made Europe into a sort of American water- 

 ing place — have worked no appreciable difference in the mass of 

 Eastern city life which, for that third or quarter of the year, sum- 

 mers in these New England States, and certainly does not draw 

 its consumption of food from any other than these New England 

 markets. Those great laws of compensation (quite as little capa- 

 ble of formulation perhaps as they are perfectly constant and un- 

 derstood) may be relied upon to provide at least this much, to 

 wit, that the increased facilities for visiting Europe from our 

 large trading cities would themselves enrich a non-Europe-visit- 

 ing class sufficiently to enable it to itself seek a nearer vacation 

 at home, in New England itself, let us say, and so offset the class 

 which, with increasing wealth, yearly finds itself able to cross the 

 Atlantic for its annual outing. 



Why, then, in the teeth of this very law of compensating 

 economy, in the teeth of applied science, and in the teeth of the 

 constant rules of supply and demand, should farms in New Eng- 

 land be or seek to become " abandoned " ? 



I believe that certain statistical societies find the reason in 

 what they call sometimes " overeducation," and again sometimes 



