316 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



labor in every department of business has created a neces- 

 sity for clothing labor with some degree of intelligence ; and 

 out of this elevation of practical service has grown that active, 

 vigorous and untiring fiiculty for invention which forms one 

 of the striking characteristics of the present age, and gives 

 new force to all our industries, agriculture included. 



That the prosperity of agriculture has kept pace with the 

 increasing prosperity of every other industry in our land, is 

 manifest. The activity of the grain-growing sections of our 

 country has been and is great ; and the demand for the prod- 

 uct of the pasture and the stall has been most encouraging 

 to those who supply the market at home and abroad. It may 

 be that this encouragement of local and special crops has not 

 been as great, and that the farmer is especially called upon to 

 consider how he can secure a suitable reward for the labor 

 which he applies to the careful and systematic tillage of the 

 soil, to supply local markets with what they require, and for 

 the care which he bestows on the orchard and the dairy. But, 

 on the whole, the condition of the American former is looked 

 upon as so satisfactory in every point of view that the lesson 

 taught by him is engaging the minds of some of the most 

 thoughtful statesmen and publicists of the old world. It has 

 been discovered that the American system of land-holding, 

 for instance, is the foundation of great popular content ; and, 

 accompanied as it is by great social and civil opportunities, 

 surrounded as it is by the free institutions of our land, 

 attended as it is by the school-house and the meeting-house, 

 and by the constant call to public service which leaves but few 

 exempt among us, it constitutes the foundation on which rest 

 great mental activity, great dignity of character, great enter- 

 prise and ambition. To the practical work of the agricultural 

 community here, wide-spread disaster, moreover, is un- 

 known. The local damao;e of a drouo-ht or a flood is not 

 indeed unusual ; but the extent of our territory is such, the 

 diversity of our soil and climate is so great, that the disasters 

 seem to be circumscribed and accidental, while the pros- 

 perity is wide-spread and constant. With landed possessions 

 which are obliged to bear the burdens of heavy taxation, 

 with wages of labor vastly greater than in any of the 

 countries of Europe, with the personal requirements of the 



