SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK-PART III. 77 



petitor with the West in attracting emigrants. The average man who 

 goes to a farm in the East comes from towns and cities. He has 

 worked at a deslv probably for a number of years and sees that he cannot 

 hope for advancement there. With a capital, usually not more than 

 $2,500, he will go into a strange business and attempt to provide a home 

 for his family. You will probably agree with me, from what I have said, 

 that such a man has really a better chance to take up one of the neg- 

 lected eastern farms than he would have to come here and attempt your 

 larger farming; and here is another thing that will seem strange to you: 

 In the town of Willington, Connecticut, there are a little over 200 voters, 

 which will give you an idea of the population. Yet at the railroad sta- 

 tion alone there was sold from the feed store last year over $30,000 worth 

 of western grain. In the town of Rockville, a larger town, these sales 

 amounted to $125,000, and in Putnam, still larger, $200,000 worth of your 

 grain was handled. The very life-blood of your soil is thus going to 

 the East, and what I want you to remember is that many of our eastern 

 farmers can actually pay these enormous prices for your grain and make 

 more out of the feeding of it than you do. I doubt if you ever saw a 

 Yankee pay out a dollar for grain unless he was pretty sure of getting 

 more than that out of it. For instance, take a section that I know in 

 Connecticut. They will take a dollar's worth of your grain and feed it 

 largely to poultry. The proceeds from the poultry will amount to at 

 least $10, and the manure from the hens mixed with murite of potash 

 and acid phosphate will help produce another crop of peaches, which will 

 bring nearly a dollar more. Perhaps these things are new to you, but 

 I state them as facts to show you how in the East we are forced to take 

 advantage of opportunities, and it has been said that if you corner a 

 Yankee he will proceed to corner the corner and make it available for 

 sale with those who formerly thought it had no value. Y^ou will see 

 things which elderly men in the East have done when deprived of their 

 places in the city which would astonish you were I to tell you. I know 

 a man now close on to 70 who, in the panic thirteen years ago, was 

 thrown out of his position with a mere handful of money, which he 

 had saved. He went to one of the hill towns in New England and bought 

 a neglected farm. He has improved the place so that it could be sold 

 for twice what he paid for it. He has a flock of Wyandotte hens, which 

 yielded him a steady income of over $700 a year. He has a peach or- 

 chard in addition. The New England farmers have studied out one great 

 truth and that is that a man never does his best until he is up against 

 hard and fierce opposition. That is one of the troubles with your people; 

 you have never been really "up against it" in your business as farmers. 

 When you do really come face to face with hard opposition my judgment 

 is that you will solve many of the troublesome problems which are now 

 facing us in this country. I had this idea of burden bearing forced upon 

 me when I was a boy. One day the old gentleman took me out to the 

 woods to haul home a log. He had an old horse, spavined, wind-broken 

 and thin as a rail and otherwise out of shape. He hitched this horse to 

 the log, but the poor old fellow could not pull it. The old man sat down 

 on a stump, took out his handkerchief and rubbed his head. If you gen- 



