THE ROTATION OF THE FARM. 381 



sands of employees who were waiting for those factories and mills 

 to be built would be a serious item in the' national wealth ! Most 

 of us would not be kept awake of nights by the fear of decreas- 

 ing national wealth, I think, from that particular state of affairs ! 

 Some labor, no doubt, would be required to build those same mills 

 and factories. The laborers who were to build them would per- 

 haps be drawn from somewhere, and so leave vacancies to be filled 

 from somewhere else. But the prospect as it seems was enough 

 to seriously alarm this gentleman ; and I doubt not that, from a 

 standpoint the reverse of his, it might still have its terrors to 

 even less special and specious theorists, who still cling to the old 

 fallacy that figures always tell the truth, and will not hear of the 

 proposition of the Irish gentleman in Christie-Murray's delight- 

 ful novel, who called figures the biggest liars in existence ! Be- 

 cause, then, the farmer's daughter prefers her piano to her milk- 

 ing stool, and her brother his bicycle to his fodder scythe : or — let 

 us say, because the one would rather sell ribbons and the other 

 foot up columns of figures in city establishments than to continue 

 in the duties which a residence upon the ancestral acres imposes 

 — the whims or caprices of a few boys and girls are creating great 

 gaps in the agricultural precincts which the supreme, even if 

 elusive, laws of economical compensation are unable to fill ! 



It would seem to be a rather violent proposition this : namely, 

 that one's personal whim can explode or dominate the laws of 

 supply and demand. 



Instead of the rotation of crops, is it not what might be called 

 the " rotation of the farm," brought on by the exchange of farm 

 for city employments by a constant or periodic ratio, which has 

 called for the Massachusetts pamphlet ? 



The man who lives in the country yearns for the city. The 

 man who lives in the city yearns for the country. The farmer 

 would seek pent precincts of the town and bend over ledgers ; the 

 clerk, already bent double over his ledgers, craves the free air 

 and the unconfined horizons of the farm, the distant hills, and 

 the broad acres between. Variety, is it not, which they both 

 seek ? In opposite currents, doubtless, but both continually by 

 immutable tendencies. Such is certainly the optimistic theory of 

 the situation implied by these " abandoned " farm pamphlets. Is 

 it the true one ? 



To assume that the farmer will farm no more would be a fear- 

 ful prospect for our race — quite as fearful as to assume that the 

 soldier would not fight for his country against any other country, 

 that the tailor would not make us clothes, or that the shoemaker 

 would not supply us with shoes. Surely it would be great gain, not 

 only to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but to the national 

 commonwealth, if, instead of drawing grewsome and doleful mor- 



