FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 19 



thropy did not intend the bestowment of a dole, but 

 the upHfting to a better self-help of the then chief 

 industrial class of the community, comprising the 

 bulk of the population. The patriotism of the move- 

 ment may be judged to have had a two-fold relation; 

 first a desire that the new nation should keep pace 

 with the old father-lands in applications of the useful 

 arts and, secondly, an aim to reach a right solution, 

 through the way of practical wisdom, of the pressing 

 economic questions of the hour. There were no party 

 questions involved. Leading men of both parties were 

 in the movement. Discontent prevailed, especially in 

 the middle and western parts of the State, which had 

 but lately culminated in insurrection, and all over the 

 State there was poverty from the pinch of which few 

 were wholly exempt, and which in many cases ap- 

 proached to destitution. It was easy to rail at the 

 government and demand less taxes and legislation to 

 shift from particular classes a due share of the burden; 

 and it must have been evident to men of the type of 

 those above enumerated that the only solution was in 

 a resort to the primary sources of wealth, that then 

 most generally available being the cultivation of the 

 soil. 



The long war of the Revolution had dissipated the 

 accumulations of former times not only by direct de- 

 struction of property but by onerous though unavoid- 

 able taxation and the cutting off of various profitable 

 industries, possible only in times of peace, so that the 

 people had been spending not earnings but savings; 

 and besides all was an enormous depreciation of legal- 

 tender values. Farmers might well complain of hard 

 times, when, as in one instance of record, which 

 illustrates the general experience, a farmer sold a cow 

 in the spring for $40 in continental money, but in the 



