SECRETARY'S REPORT. 37 



men away from the farms. All the active service of importance 

 in tliis busy Commonwealth, has been drawn from the land. 

 And the time has arrived, when our agricultural interests 

 demand the most careful consideration and encouragement. As 

 the agriculture of our country increases in importance, and labor 

 is drawn into other channels, it becomes us, in our competition 

 with other producing nations, to avail ourselves of all those 

 aids which science and the arts afford, through the accurate 

 direction of toil on the land, and through the best labor-saving 

 machinery. In supplying the markets with the great staple 

 necessaries of life, there is no reason that intelligent American 

 labor should yield to the ruder and more ignorant toil of others. 

 With our diversity of soil and climate, and our capacity to 

 direct our energy aright, wo ought to fear no agricultural 

 rivals. 



The advancement of agriculture in this country is, at this 

 moment, especially important. We present the extraordinary 

 spectacle of a nation involved in a violent civil strife, in which 

 all the energies of the people are engaged, and at the same 

 time sustaining its business relations, and its currency, above 

 the reach of financial convulsions, and hitherto converting our 

 vast credit into a means of increased and unprecedented pros- 

 perity. However wise and able may have been the counsels 

 which have guided our finances thus far, however large the 

 sagacity may be which has controlled our currency with high 

 national honor — the true value of our issue arises from the 

 unceasing industry of our people, extending over a vast area, 

 with diverse interests and labor, and applied to every variety 

 of production. In this work agriculture has performed a very 

 important part. How abundantly have we fed our people from 

 the farms lying directly about them ! How amply have we 

 supplied our armies from the land ! How intimately has the 

 current of events connected our interests with the great pro- 

 ducing regions of the West! For the first time in history, the 

 power of a people combining in large contiguous territory all 

 the arts of commerce, manufactures and agriculture, to sustain 

 itself in war, has been illustrated. Not only have we supplied 

 ourselves, but thirty-five per cent, of all the grain imported into 

 Great Britain during the last year came from our sliores, the 

 surplus of our production. While our farmers feel that every 



