1846.] Agriculture and other Pursuits. 145 



MUTUAL DEPENDENCE BETWEEN AGRICULTURE 

 AND OTHER PURSUITS. 



[Extracts from an Address delivered before the Agricultural 

 Societies of Hampshire and Hampden counties, in Massachusetts, 

 at their Anniversary Fairs, in Northampton and Springfield, in 

 October, 1845, by Rev. Edward Hitchcock, LL. D., President of 



Amherst College.] 



The mutual dependence between the arts, manufactures, com- 

 merce and agriculture, will need but a few words of illustration, 

 because familiar to all. In order to success in any important pur- 

 suit, it is necessary that a man should give to it an undivided, 

 constant, and nearly exclusive attention. Neither the farmer, 

 mechanic, or merchant, can be thriving and successful, if he do 

 not rise up early and sit up late, and make his business a leading 

 object of pursuit. He cannot successfully combine two or more 

 of these branches of labor, unless it be as mere oversight. What, 

 then, could the merchant, mechanic or manufacturer do, without 

 the products of the soil ? and how could he obtain them, were 

 there not a class of men exclusively devoted to their growth ? 

 Take a single example. The exports of the United States, in 

 1835, amounted to more than 101 millions of dollars; of which 

 about 75 millions, or more than three quarters, were agricultural 

 products. Let the farmer then, cease his labors, and it would al- 

 most sweep commerce from the ocean, shut up almost every mer- 

 chant's shop, and starve out most of our mechanics and manufac- 

 turers. 



On the other hand, let not the farmer imagine, because he is 

 the principal producer, that he is independent of commerce, arts, 

 and manufactures. His existence might, indeed, be continued 

 without them ; but it would be only existence as a savage ; and 

 of course only a small fraction of the present population of a 

 country could in this way even exist. Besides, they would owe 

 their sustenance, not to agriculture, but rather to the bounty of 

 Providence, which has caused the earth, in almost every land, to 

 bring forth spontaneously the fruits essential for the food of a 

 scattered population. But agriculture, properly so called, can not 

 exist without commerce and manufactures. The very first step in 

 farming, I mean the breaking up of the soil for seed, requires the 

 artizan's skill in the construction of tools. Without that skill, 

 indeed, the farmer's present comfortable, and it may be elegant, 

 habitation, must be exchanged for the skin lodge of the Pawnee, 

 the bark hut of the Hollander, or, at the most, the wigwam of the 



No. VII. 10 



