154 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



NOVEMBER %1 , 1S33. 



state of society, where his taxes will lie light, and 

 liis children may know the blessings of ignorance; 

 profligacy, gross immorality, with no schools, no 

 churches, no holy days to trouble them. He may 

 soon leave to his children, if they have not then 

 wasted his property, each » farm, in "the barren 

 luxuriance of nature." 



A farm ! what is that, or any other earthly pos- 

 session to one debased in morals and incapable of 

 any true enjoyment ? Can an intelligent and ra- 

 tional farmer desire to leave to his children pos- 

 sessions, which, through his blind avarice, they 

 have no fitness of character to enjoy or bold in 

 esteem ? 



Ii\ all fair considerations emigration should be 

 discouraged, even from the old to the new parts of 

 the same country, at least until by removal the 

 emigrant may improve bis condition and that of 

 his family. It is a sound maxim in political econ- 

 omy, that the "emigration of industry, capital, 

 and local attachment, is no less a dead and total 

 loss to the country thus abandoned, than it is a 

 clear gain to the country affording an asylum." A 

 course of policy or of management that induces a 

 people to leave their native section of a country is, 

 as Christiana, a queen of Sweden described if, in 

 reference to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, 

 by Louis XIV. " He bad used his right hand to 

 cut off his left." 



The encouragement and promotion of agricul- 

 tural and domestic industry, I consider as the 

 wisest policy that can he devised, to promote the 

 prosperity of our county and vicinity, and to pre- 

 vent the evil of emigration. 



Let us adopt the improvements in cultivation, 

 with improved ploughs and other implements: and 

 with a small part of the expense and hardship that 

 would attend removal ami settlement in a new 

 country, our fields would be renovated with beauty 

 and more bountiful in harvest. We Can now point 

 to instances of enterprise animated by the counte- 

 nance of this society, where a dead, worthless 

 meadow, full of hard hack and rocks, has been 

 convened into a beautiful lot of English grass, 

 twenty acres yielding twenty tons of excellent hay. 

 This the enterprising cultivator* performed with- 

 out abandoning the land of his fathers, without 

 taking his sons and daughters away from the free 

 school, and the sound of the church bell, and the 

 dejights and decencies of good society, and with- 

 out sinking into a grave never to be bedewed with 

 the tear, or blest by the prayer of an old neighbor. 

 We can point to many instances of improvement, 

 where an advance of twenty-five per cent, in cost 

 of cultivation, yields in harvest, a hundred per 

 cent, of increase. The increased supply of agri- 

 cultural products invites the mechanic and the 

 manufacturer to locate themselves near the thrifty 

 farmers. This revived spirit of enterprise and 

 industry, goes into every department of life. Its 

 ornaments and comforts greet us in our dwellings 

 from the reciprocal affection flint presides there ; 

 and its luxury crowns our table and teaches us to 

 know more of the still richer luxury of grateful 

 hearts. 



The last census of our country gave us credit 

 for a small advance in population; a little more 

 than ten per cent, in ten years. 



The county of Plymouth contains probably about 

 nine hundred square miles, and, on an average, 

 about forty seven inhabitants to each square mile, 



Major Curtis, of Scituate. 



I have no means of exact calculation, but I should 

 judge, that as much as one quarter part of the sub- 

 sistence of the whole population is drawn from 

 the ocean, or consists of grain, flour, and other 

 products imported into the county. Many thou- 

 sands of dollars are annually prod for agricultural 

 products, from other parts of the country, which 

 agricultural enterprise might easily supply from 

 our own soil. I doubt not that the county, sterile 

 as some parts of it are, is capable of affording 

 successful employment and support to a population 

 of one hundred thousand, and at the same time of 

 supplying agricultural products to support a popu- 

 lation of one hundred thousand more engaged ii 

 navigation, fisheries, mechanical and manufacturing 

 employments. The rise of the nominal value of 

 real estate would enable the farmer to realize the 

 golden dreams of his youth. In some of our towns 

 the shoemakers and other mechanics have began 

 and are going on successfully to make good the 

 calculation. Their industry creates a market for 

 the farmer's products, and continually adds to the 

 wealth of all classes of their neighbor. 



" Health, peace, and sweet content to them it brings, 

 More precious prizes than the wealth of kings.*' 



The culture of Silk has engaged the attention 

 of our enterprising neighbors in Connecticut al- 

 ready to n considerable extent. I anticipate that 

 the time is not far distant, when ibis society will 

 deem it an object worthy of their zealous care to 

 promote. This article that the Emperor Aurclian 

 thought too costly for him to afford his queen a 

 garment of it, as its price was equal to its weight 

 in gold, in our times gives brilliancy to every cir- 

 cle, whether of recreation or around the altars of 

 religion. 



The people of the United States have paid for 

 silk, imported in one year, a sum exceeding seven 

 millions of dollars. The annual importation of 

 this article amounts commonly to five or six mil- 

 lions of dollars, and will continue to increase as 

 population increases, unless a domestic supply re- 

 duces it. If the silk annually imported amounts 

 to six millions of dollars, the average sum annually 

 paid by the people of this county exceeds tiventy 

 thousand dollars! This sum, annually applied to 

 reward female industry and agricultural industry, 

 united, as would be happy for society that they 

 ever should be, is an object worthy of the grave 

 consideration of the philanthropist and the patri- 

 ot. — Our soil and climate are both favorable to the 

 cultivation of the While Mulberry tree. It loves 

 a soil dry, and sandy or stony. It lias been plant- 

 ed, and is flourishing in Massachusetts, N. Hamp- 

 shire and Vermont. In three counties in Connec- 

 ticut, whose parallel of latitude is little more than 

 one degree south of Plymouth county, silk has 

 been successfully cultivated fbr twenty years. The 

 amount in 1810 was estimated at aboi., thirty 

 thousand dollars. — Froni three to four toi.« are 

 made annually in the town »f Mansfield. To in- 

 sure success to this productive branch of industry, 

 I should consider myself remiss in duty not to so- 

 licit the prompt and liberal patronage of this soci- 

 ety. And if it should be brought before our State 

 Legislature, it would not, I hope, be less success- 

 ful than plans for reducing the representation. 



Luxury has been considered as a national evil. 

 Hut it is not so when it is the product of individ- 

 ual industry and enterprise; unless it be extorted 

 from the individual to pamper idleness and profli- 

 gacy, or minister to the excesses of corrupt courts. 

 When industry can command its innocent luxuries 



and ornaments, the brow of labor is smoothed, 

 and domestic attachments are strengthened". — The 

 chemists and philosophers of France labored a 

 long time unavailingly, to introduce there the cul- 

 tivation of the potato. They proved by their ex- 

 periments that it was not only an innocent, but 

 very nutritious article of food. — At length °n n 

 day of public festivity, Louis 15th wore at court a 

 hunch of potato flowers in his button hole, and the 

 potato became in general a staple article of food. 

 In all countries, communities are moved and 

 swayed by example. Let families of wealth and 

 influence commence the cultivation of silk, and 

 adorn themselves with the products of their own 

 industry, and soon will this branch of industry be- 

 come popular and flourishing. That is the elo. 

 qtience that will have the most power in this com- 

 munity. Neighbor will learn from neighbor what 

 he would never learn from addresses and books. 

 We find so much that we In ar and read useless, 

 or inapplicable to the business of life, that we even 

 neglect most useful theories and rules. With good 

 point some author curiously remarks, that " Milton 

 makes an angel warn Adam against star-gazing, 

 and that Eve cursed her race by an intemperate 

 Curiosity for unprofitable knowledge." 



And when I invite families of wealth to set ex- 

 amples of productive industry, I invite them to be 

 happier than in any other way they can be permit- 

 ted to be. " Comfok't, plenty, freedom and virtue, 

 all spring from industry." — The power of produc- 

 tive industry is the source of wealth, to individu- 

 als and communities. It becomes the highest in 

 honor, it becomes the fathers and the illations of 

 our community, to see that the spirit of industry 

 is wisely directed. The woild has boasted too 

 long of its fields of glory in human blood. Let 

 the competition, in future, be in harvests, in fur- 

 nishing and wielding implements of peaceful hus- 

 bandry, in gaining successful conquests of stub- 

 born and sterile lands, causing them to pay rich 

 tribute to the support and comfort of man. 



In the opinion of one of the best of our old 

 patriots, (Mr. Madison) we shall concur, "That 

 there cannot be a more rational principle in the 

 code of agriculture, than that every farm, which 

 is in good heart, should be kept so: that every 

 one, not in good heart, should be made so, and 

 that what is right as to the farm, generally, is so as 

 to every part of every farm." 



Nor is household industry, though its pecuniary 

 compensation be small, less important than a farm 

 in good heart, to accomplish the purposes of the 

 farmer's enterprise. In a liberal heslowinent of 

 rewards upon female industry, agricultural socie- 

 ties have wisely consulted the great objects of their 

 institution. All the virtues live by encouragement. 

 That government that best protects and encourages 

 useful industry, will prove its superiority to other 

 governments. 



The complaint we do hear reiterated, from a 

 portion ot our community, that for them there is 

 no profitable employment, no means to lighten the 

 toil that parental kindness cheerfully sustains for 

 them ; no power, as they could wish, to gladden 

 the eye of conjugal love, that beams upon them. 

 In the absence of the wool and flax which the 

 manufactories have taken out of the hands of do- 

 iiKstic diligence and enterprise, let them have the 

 means to procure by their own industry, articles of 

 elegance, that now take thousands from the pock- 

 ets they would gladly enrich. Let them have the 

 trees planted, und they will soon save, at home, 



