294 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of the agriculture of the present day which has been over- 

 looliecl in our eflbrts before the pubhc. Tliere is business in 

 agriculture ; there is a call at the present time for the appli- 

 cation of business principles in agriculture. We have been 

 teaching our boys as we have brought them up on the farm 

 and engaged them in the work of the farm, that " to dig and 

 to hoe, to cat and to grow" was the business of New Eng- 

 land agriculture. This is all wrong. There is something 

 more to it than simply to dig and eat. We want to incul- 

 cate in them and to realize ourselves that there is something 

 of ambition connected with agricultural affairs, that there is 

 some chance for the rising generation and for ourselves to 

 gratify this ambition. There are ample opportunities for 

 doing this. Modern methods are opening to view that 

 which we have not heretofore been able to see, and many of 

 us old fellows, whi> are engaged in the work of the farm, 

 are carrying on that work in accordance with the ideas that 

 we gained in our early days instead of in accordance with 

 the developments which have recently been made. These 

 developments in the way of farm implements, farm appH- 

 ances and methods of work are presenting New England 

 agriculture in a different light from that in which we have 

 heretofore been accustomed to look at it, and opening up a 

 more hopeful view than we have heretofore entertained in 

 regard to it. There are opportunities, let me repeat, for the 

 gratification of ambition here in New England, and we want 

 to hold that fact out as an inducement to our young men to 

 remain on the farm. You have some worthy examples of 

 this application of business principles and the application of 

 capital to agriculture here in your own State ; we have them 

 in Maine, every New England State has them, and the 

 extent to which this capital can be applied, and profitably 

 applied, has not been measured. I was gratified by the 

 statement of the speaker yesterday when he said, — and he 

 might have put it much stronger, — that the capital invested 

 in New England agriculture was paying a handsome per- 

 centage of profit to-day. I would put it even stronger than 

 that. I would say that there is no business carried on in 

 New England at the present time that on the average yields 

 so large a percentage of profit to the investor as the business 



