238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



As you are at present situated, will your farm enable you to 

 become a progressive member of this progressive generation, 

 and thus contribute your share towards keeping up New 

 England's reputation for mental superiority? I will answer 

 the question for you, and save you the humiliating acknowl- 

 edgment. No. It is now your turn to question, and 

 your interrogation will be; Is there a way out? Is there 

 brightness ahead ? Can the gloom that comes from financial 

 depression be dispelled? Can the New England farmer 

 maintain himself and his family, keeping abreast with the 

 times, developing his material resources, and leave the farm 

 the better for his occupancy? Unhesitatingly, I answer yes. 

 But not by the old system of farm business ; but by co-opera- 

 tion. In other words, by following the modern system of 

 business. I believe in New England agriculture, and 

 beyond that I believe in the people her soil has developed ; 

 in their perception, keenness, and good judgment, which 

 prompts me to say that I have faith in their future actions. 



Can I offer you any help by indicating how the individual 

 farmer can enhance his prosperity by co-operation with his 

 neighbor? Possibly. I will endeavor to ; not, however, by 

 any device or scheme of my own, new and untried. I have 

 not the vanity or egotism to sustain me in that ; but by relat- 

 ing to you the action that is going on in other sections, — the 

 same as the traveller in foreign lands will describe to you 

 the scenes he has witnessed or perhaps participated in, — for 

 here and there co-operation has reached the farm at last, and 

 we are not wanting in many successful examples. 



Before the general farmer can begin to co-operate with 

 his neighbor, he has a few things to learn. The old divines 

 used to recommend an occasional self-examination as being 

 of great good to the individual, taken from a theological 

 standpoint. If we shift the point of observation from the 

 theological one, with its futurity of the soul, to the material 

 one of present business (which is not a violent action, as a 

 person's religion depends much upon his financial relations) , 

 we shall find an examination to be equally beneficial. All 

 farmers cannot co-operate, " they are not built that way;" 

 but the man that cannot must drop out of existence, — there is 

 no place for him. The world does not want him, farewell ! 



