FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 145 



present condition of this country, this society will not 

 this year call for the annual bounty of $600 furnished 

 by the State. 



The war had begun, and the trustees felt that the 

 State's money was more needed for her soldiers at the 

 front, than it was needed for the society's work in 

 Massachusetts. On Oct. 18 of the same year, the fol- 

 lowing was adopted by the board. 



Voted, to invest $1500, now in the hands of the 

 treasurer, in the seven-thirty loan of the United States. 



The latter vote might not seem to signify much to 

 readers whose memory does not reach back to the 

 trying experiences of the civil war; or, in ignorance of 

 the facts, it might seem only to mean that a prudent 

 investment was made at a good rate of interest. But 

 the prophets of evil were many in those days, though 

 fewer, indeed, in this, than some other northern states. 

 Such decried the ability of the government to fulfill 

 its promises of money payment; predicted that the 

 war would end in ruin of the national credit, and, with 

 special reference to currency notes, or "greenbacks," 

 declared that the time would soon come, when a 

 farmer would not be willing to exchange his load of 

 wood for greenbacks, cord for cord." It argued the 

 possession of patriotic feeling as well as cool judg- 

 ment, at the point of time named, to invest in govern- 

 ment securities. The trustees were men of that stamp, 

 and no doubt felt, besides, that it would be action in 

 the direction of the society's mission to contribute, in 

 this way, to sustain the government, under whose 

 triumphant sword, only, could the arts of peace be 

 expected to flourish. Investments in national securi- 



