No. 4.] COUNTRY LIFE. 117 



get seventy-five cents instead of four or five cents. Why 

 haven't you been doing it all these years ? You have been 

 saying, "The farms are running down, and nothing more 

 can be done." There is certainly not as much done as 

 mio;ht be done. 



But the chief purpose, after all, of the Board of Agri- 

 culture of the State of Massachusetts is not to raise cab- 

 bages, or potatoes, or apples, or peaches, or pears, or to 

 kill ofi" the gypsy moths. All that is initiatory. While 

 all these are included in their duties, and while it is cer- 

 tainly of great consequence to know how to raise cattle and 

 to make butter and get it to market, yet there is an end 

 beyond all these things for which the State appointed this 

 Board of Agriculture. The people of the State do not care 

 how many potatoes can be raised, if they are not eaten ; 

 they do not care how many berries can be picked, if no 

 man needs them. They do not care how many cows can 

 be raised, if the butter is not wanted. The great end of all 

 these things is manhood, — the making of men. That old 

 saying is as mighty now as it was when that New Hamp- 

 shire man was asked what he could raise among those 

 rocks, and he replied, " We raise men ! We raise men ! " 

 That is the fundamental purpose of the Board of Agri- 

 culture, after all, to raise men ! The raising of vegetables 

 is simply a means toward a definite end. After all, the 

 great purpose is to raise men. One Daniel Webster is 

 worth more than all the potatoes you can raise in Hamp- 

 shire County. One William CuUen Bryant is more valua- 

 ble than all the corn you can raise in Hampden County. 

 One great man whom the people rise up and call blessed 

 is of more account than all the wheat combined in the 

 graneries of Chicago. When you can raise a man like 

 Senator AYilson in a little country town, and send him out 

 to make nations free, then has the agricultural society 

 which enabled him to live on that stony farm done a great 

 duty. 



I say, then, the chief purpose is to raise men. If that 

 be the purpose, let us see what kind of men are raised in 

 Massachusetts in the country districts. If I had only had 

 the time, in the midst of the great multiplicity of my 



