1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 333 



the minds of the producers that it was to be permanent. It 

 was disappointing and hard for farmers to realize that this 

 was not to be, and they did not cheerfully nor readily return 

 to normal prices. This condition, existing for eight or ten 

 years, with a reluctant return to old rates, has given an im- 

 pression of a general decline in agriculture which is disproved 

 by safer tests." 



Much the same conclusion is drawn by a casual observer 

 in driving through some rural districts, settled long years 

 ago, and even now remote from railway connections or a 

 convenient market, quite outside the radius of a manufactur- 

 ing or a commercial centre. He sees farm-houses, barns and 

 buildings going to ruin, — good, comfortable homes in their 

 day, where large families have been raised, members of 

 which have gone out to colonize new lands, or to give addi- 

 tional impulse to the throbbing beats of great business centres, 

 by the infusion of new, hearty, healthy blood. They have 

 gone, not because farm work was too hard, not because farm- 

 ing would not give them a good living, but from a proud, 

 restless ambition to be independent 



But, while looking upon these evidences of thrifty, happy 

 homes, once so cheerful and prosperous, now "touched by 

 the mortal finger of decay," and crumbling into ruins, it 

 seems to him as a picture of desolation ; and from these he 

 generalizes that all the agriculture of Massachusetts has quite 

 declined, and that the State is being depopulated of its rural 

 inhabitants to a greater extent than is the case. 



But, when he descends from these rough heights to the 

 neighborhood of a railway station, a manufacturing village 

 or a popular resort for summer residents, he will find that 

 these people from the hills have only sought a convenient 

 market for agricultural products, easier grown and more 

 remunerative on smaller holdings of better land, without 

 thereby decreasing the population of the Commonwealth. 

 If he extends his inquiries into the cities and large towns, he 

 will find, among the wealthiest merchants, the ablest finan- 

 ciers and most successful business men, many who as farmers' 

 boys commenced with sweeping the store or driving trucks ; 

 many of the most prominent in the learned professions 

 who left the farms because of lofty ambition and want of 



