AGEICULTEEE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



CAPITAL m FAKMING. 



From an Address before the Essex Agricultural Society. 



BY JOHN L. SHOREY. 



In New England, and the older portions of the West, the 

 manufacturing population is centred in cities ; and the more 

 remote agricultural districts, iu which the fertility of soil 

 even originally good has been exhausted with but limited 

 power of renewal, will no longer support the natural in- 

 crease of population, capital, as represented by the value 

 of land, remains stationary ; labor is over-abundant, and 

 hence under-paid. But a remedy more than equal to the 

 difficulty is found in a widely-diffused taste for city life, that 

 leads our boys away from the farm, and makes the time they 

 are compelled to stay seem almost a hardship ; so that it 

 may even happen that those remaining are so few as to alter 

 the balauce in favor of home labor. 



To go beyond the mere laborer, let us take the case of the 

 young man who, with little or no capital, but plenty of energy 

 and pluck, has decided to go where land is rich and abundant. 

 Such is a common type of the Western pioneer. To go where 

 land is still to be obtained at government prices, the settler 

 must go far beyond the region of cities. For a habitation 

 he hollows out the earth, roofs the excavation with logs and 

 thatch, and over all piles earth again. Earth-covered and 

 earth-surrounded, the first winter he may be obliged to quit 

 his burrow for the plains, there to obtain subsistence by huut- 

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