94 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



where there is a large population engaged in manufactures and commerce. 

 Hence the second source of national wealth is manufacturing industry. 

 No nation ever became wealthy by raising the raw material and then 

 exchanging it for the manufactured article. The manufacturing people 

 always have the advantage. They may work day and night, summer and 

 winter, in fair and stormy weather. An agricultural people work only 

 in the day time, when the earth is free from frosts, and when the clouds 

 are not disburdening themselves upon the earth. A manufacturing 

 population can avail themselves to any extent of the aid of machinery. 

 The fall of water in the town of Lowell is made to do the work of a million 

 human beings. Everthiug the farmer raises must be brought out of the 

 earth by main force, by hand work. The farmer's productions are bulky 

 and are often almost consumed in getting them to market. The manu- 

 factured article is usually comparatively light in proportion to its value. 

 The farmer, moreover is obliged to take the chances of unpropitious 

 seasons and occasionally a short crop. But no variation of the seasons 

 has ever been known to produce a short crop of boots and shoes, and no 

 drought has ever been so great as to blight the labors of the loom. With 

 these advantages a manufacturing people will always continue to keep 

 a purely agricultural people in debt. Towns and cities will spring up 

 among them and the very fact of a condensed population gives them 

 great advantages. An exclusively agricultural people in the present age 

 of the world will always be poor. They want a home market. They want 

 that enterprise and activity which is engendered merely by bringing 

 masses of people to act upon each other by mutual stimulation and 

 excitement." ' 



The points which I wish to bring before you are three in number. 



First, That it is to the advantage of agi'iculture that the present sharp 

 distinction between agriculture and manufacture should be to some 

 degree broken down and the present geographical separation of one from 

 the other be decreased. 



Second, That to accomplish this such manufactures as depend upon 

 purity of materials, artistic quality and the manual skill of the worker 

 rather than upon power machinery and the division of labor, should be 

 promoted in the smaller cities and villages of the agricultural regions of 

 our country. 



And finally, if a manufacturing population is, in this way brought near 

 to the agriculturist and affords him a market, agriculture should promptly 

 be diversified to satisfy as many of the requirements of the local market 

 as possible. 



I^t us take up these propositions in order. Before the days of steam 

 and of the factory system and the railway, agriculture and manufacture 

 were closely joined. They were always in the same regions and often in 

 the same family economy. The manufactures were thus more evenly dis- 

 tributed over the area of the country than now. 



The great inventions made by our forefathers led to a wonderful 

 increase of the productivity of manufactures. This increase so powerfully 

 impressed the world that the evolution of the new system was permitted 

 to have full sway. By it agriculture and manufacture have been cut 

 assunder and the manufactures highly concentrated in certain regions. 

 This separation has led to a great increase of commercial movements 



