COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 19 



at the nearest station every morning, and receive the cans there 

 again in the evening, receiving from twenty to thirty cents for 

 each eight-and-one-half-quart can, though Boston consumers pay 

 a considerable advance on that price. A western farmer who 

 could secure such a price would regard himself as opulent. 

 Again, Boston is one of the best apple markets in the country, 

 but the market is supplied largely from New York and Michigan. 

 Yet New England is an excellent apple country. Every year 

 seedling apple-trees grow without planting and flourish without 

 care. Even where grafting is done, it has been the custom to 

 graft only such trees as come up themselves along old stone walls 

 and other such places. Apple-growing, then, is a New England 

 possibility. 



In the Connecticut River Valley, where extensive cultivation 

 is possible, the agricultural prospects are very hopeful. I saw 

 many fields of corn which would astonish a Kansas farmer. The 

 census returns show a larger yield of corn per acre in New Eng- 

 land than in a great part of the Corn Belt itself. It is grown, 

 however, in small fields highly fertilized and intensively culti- 

 vated, whereas the western farmer never even hoes his corn, yet 

 he grows the largest crop per man in the world. 



On the whole there is every reason to believe that the decline 

 in New England agriculture is at an end. With the practical 

 exhaustion of free public land in the far West, the rise in the 

 price of land in the middle West, and the development of cities 

 for their markets, the consequent rise in the price of agricultural 

 products will give a value to New England farms which they 

 have not had for many years. It is to be hoped, however, that 

 the process of "abandoning farms" will continue, if this simply 

 means that several small farms are to be used in one fair-sized 

 farm upon which the farmer can economically use superior draft 

 animals and labor-saving machines; for New England methods 

 of agriculture are fifty years behind the times. 



