420 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



ninety-nine persons out of every hundred, who embark in com- 

 mercial pursuits, get involved in embarrassments, which com- 

 pel them to stop payment, and frequently, after struggling for 

 relief, are plunged into the gulf of bankruptcy, from which 

 there is no redemption but by compounding with creditors, who 

 will forever after look at them with a scornful eye, and perhaps 

 salute them with cutting reproaches. One man out of this 

 hundred, by a few lucky speculations, makes a fortune, and 

 dazzles the eyes of the multitude, with an ostentatious display 

 of his wealth. How much better and happier the farmer and 

 the mechanic, who, though the profits of their labor may be 

 small, are sure that those profits are their own ; that they will, 

 in time, secure a competence ; that they are not subject to the 

 oft-recurring fluctuations of trade, and are out of the reach of 

 any tornado that may sweep over the money market. 



The Harmony of Labor. 



[Extract from an Mdress, by Hon. A. H. Bullock, at the last Fair of the 

 Housatonic Agricultural Society.] 



Mr. President, pass in review the productions of Berkshire 

 county, and survey their natural relations. I recall your atten- 

 tion to the tables of 1845. The paths upon your mountains 

 would naturally conduct us to the fact that, small as she is, the 

 county presents a valuation of sheep to the amount of $222,- 

 000, or two-fifths of the value of all the sheep in the Com- 

 monwealth. The estimate of neat cattle is $557,000 ; of 

 horses, $288,000 ; of swine, $62,000. Among her annual ag- 

 ricultural productions you may find wool running up as high as 

 $155,000, or almost one-half of the wool clip of the whole 

 State; oats amounting to $100,000, or one-quarter of the oat 

 crop of Massachusetts ; hay, $524,000, in which she is sur- 

 passed only by the large counties of Worcester and Middlesex ; 

 butter and cheese, $240,000, surpassing all the other counties, 

 save the two large ones already mentioned ; potatoes, $101 ,000 ; 



