STATK POMOLOGICAL S0CIE:TY. %; 



are opportunities for the farmers of New England to make a 

 living, thai is the best story perhaps, that I can tell to you 

 to-night. Twenty years ago there w^as a time when depression 

 seemed to hang all over the east. You and I know how many 

 of the neighbors pulled up and went away. You could not keep 

 them here ; they went ''out west." So year after year the popu- 

 lation dropped steadily dovs^n, down, down. You could not keep 

 them here, and for thirty years after the war there was a steady 

 loss of population, which was taken away from the east and 

 dumped west of the Mississippi. Now what was this that took 

 the men away from the east? It was in the very air. These 

 people had the idea that beyond the Mississippi there was a land 

 where people could get something for nothing. Far back before 

 the war, the farmers on the hills of New England were pros- 

 perous as they never were before. 



They were a simple, plain, God fearing people. They asked 

 odds of no man. They looked every man in the eye, and if they 

 did not like him they told him so. They were a^ strong, fearless 

 people, the best sort of people the country ever produced. My 

 grandfather tells the story how the farmers from Northern New 

 England came to Boston fifty or sixty years ago. They would 

 \yait till the snow came then they would load with wood, wool^ 

 dried apples, wax, and maple sugar and start off for Boston. 

 The day before they started the housewife would take the big 

 iron kettle and boil it full of bean soup ; then set it out and freeze 

 It hard and turn it out in a solid block. Then the next morning 

 the farmer would bore a hole right through the middle of that 

 soup, hang it on the sled and throw a cloth over it and carry it 

 off to Boston. When they wanted dinner they would take a 

 hatchet, and cut of a few slivers of that bean soup. That is the 

 kind of people that made this country. These people made 

 America what it is to-day. That was the kind of people that cut 

 slavery away from this country. When the history of the great 

 boundless west is written as it ought to be do you know that 

 nine-tenths of its greatness will be traced back to the pork and 

 beans, the fish balls and the doughnuts eaten in the New Eng- 

 land kitchen lOO years ago? Many of the abandoned farms of 

 New England were deserted because the son or brother was. 

 killed at the front. Among the noblest monuments to the Amer- 



