26 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1889. 



the state of affairs where the soil is less exuberant and the 

 situation less to be desired ! " 



Another writer of the same State, from its Rock River region, 

 which was doubtless created to console man for the loss of 

 Eden, after tlie forfeiture of that primeval garden, says that 

 " milch cows bring $14.00 for common, $30.00 for choice; steers 

 $2.25 to $2.50 per cwt." Yet, like an intelligent, and, what is bet- 

 ter, an honest man, not being blinded b}' partisan prejudice, he 

 admits that "the laws of supply and demand alone can help us." 

 And further on, after referring to the establishment of milk fac- 

 tories, he concludes with a positive assertion that may not accord 

 with the experience of some of our members : 



" But, before dairying, or any other brancli of farming, come 

 the products of the garden for profit, if vegetables can be sold 

 at almost any price." His conclusion is curious: "Oil-stoves 

 and canned fruits and vegetables ruin the market and revolu- 

 tionize the kitchen." 



The illusion of the so-called Home Market is held out to the 

 terrseculturist as an especial lure. When he would sell fruit 

 that should be eaten at home, better for himself and his young 

 family, that no market at all were in existence ! When he fos- 

 ters the abnormal growth of a manufacturing town, with its 

 inevitable concomitants of gregarious lawlessness and vice, the 

 reflection wliether he has directed his action as a citizen wisely 

 and well must compel his most serious consideration. The am- 

 bition that possesses so many of our towns and cities to try and 

 surpass each other in the mere matter of population should be 

 reckoned a species of insanity. Neither prosperity, nor all the 

 virtues, are exclusive products of the detached grange ; nor yet 

 are they monopolized by such aggregations of farmsteads as may 

 suffice to constitute a town. The development from village to 

 city, when it is inevitable, would better be a natural progression ; 

 the result of evolution, as it were, rather than of incorporated 

 speculative greed. The Golden Age may have been a myth. 

 New England, in its formative youth, was perhaps harsh and 

 intolerant ; subordinating earthly enjoyment to the rare luck of 

 predestination. But there never was a better place to live in, 



