112 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



not half business method enough nor half system enough ; 

 and, if we are to hold our own and advance, as I believe 

 we shall, it must be done through intelligent business effort, 

 and, as the lecturer says, each man, and especially each young 

 man, must take up that line of business that his farm and his 

 tastes are best adapted to. Farming in New England is 

 not mere gathering something out of the soil under the old 

 idea of sowing or planting the seed and then just gathering 

 the harvest, knowing nothing about where it is going. 

 Farming in New England has settled down, if I may use the 

 term, to the manufacture of produce. The farm being the 

 factory, the farmer furnishes the raw material, and intelli- 

 gent labor will produce from it the finished product for 

 which we aro looking. We must be looking for the finished 

 product, and, in order to obtain it, we must know for what 

 the machinery is fitted, and use that machinery intelligently. 

 Then, besides studying how to produce it, we must know 

 something about the other end of the lousiness. The suc- 

 cessful farmers of New England to-day, nearly all of them, 

 know as much about the selling of their produce as 

 they do about growing it. After the farmer has produced 

 his crop, he must know the other end of the line ; and the 

 successful farmers of New England have that knowledge. 

 Find me a farmer who is complaining of his farm as " played 

 out," who says that farming is uphill business and is "going to 

 the dogs" in New England, and I will show you a farmer, 

 ninety-nine times out of every hundred, who knows nothing 

 about the other end of his business. 



Let me give you a little idea of what I mean. A year ago 

 in June I was in Chicago ; and when I am in a large city I 

 ■make it a practice to turn out at three o'clock in the morn- 

 ing, and go down into the market and spend the morning 

 there, learning what I can about the handling and sale of 

 farm produce. I went down to the Chicago market one 

 morning, and it happened to be just in the midst of the 

 asparagus season. There was a great quantity of it coming 

 into the market. Most of it came in boxes made of white 

 pine, but they were old, they had come and gone, back and 

 forth, time and time again. It was very nice, fine asparagus, 

 tied up in the usual way, but it sold at that time for six 



