6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



find the moans by which farmhig can become one of the profita- 

 ble occupations, to bring back our boys to the homestead and 

 the cultivation of the land, — the natural occupation of men, 

 because men in all professions, men in trade, men in every pur- 

 suit of life, the shipmaster on the sea, and the lawyer in the 

 forum, are all looking forward to that time in their old age when, 

 having accumulated a fortune more or less extensive, they can 

 come back to Mother Earth and finish life tiUing the land at 

 last, — we will see that the remedy cannot be found by any com- 

 parison we can make of the different sections of our own 

 country. For we see the same causes producing the same 

 effects, the same impoverishment of the soil, after a few years 

 of skimming it, the same aggregations of land which cannot be 

 tilled, the same unwillingness in the sons to follow the business 

 of their fathers in tilling the earth, and everywhere even greater 

 want of productiveness than in New England. Therefore it is 

 that we must go to other sources of comparison to find by 

 analogy what shall be the remedy. In this search we must turn 

 aside from England ; for there, cheap capital and tenant-farming 

 on long leases, and non-proprietorship of the land, make a state 

 of things which gives no room for comparison with America. 

 Tenant-farming here is almost wholly unknown, and wherever 

 the farmer is a tenant, it has become proverbially unprofitable. 



Let us direct our attention, therefore, for the purpose of this 

 comparison, to a land where all eyes are now turned for a wholly 

 other and different reason. Let us examine the agriculture of 

 France, and compare its productions with our own, and compare 

 the habits of its people, as farmers, with ours, and see, if we 

 can, what is it that tends to show differences in their favor. 

 Here we may find facts which will teach the statesman and farmer 

 both lessons in agriculture, and quite possibly facts which will 

 arouse the attention, as surprising in themselves and containing 

 not a little rebuke to our general self-gratulation. One of our 

 vices as Americans is self-gratulation, a little vain-gloriousness, 

 a little boast. We speak of our teeming West. We speak 

 flippantly of our capability of supplying all the world with 

 breadstuffs. True, wo have the capability so to do ; but it is 

 equally lamentably true that we do not do it. The boastful 

 Western man upon his })rairics, or the Californian uj)on his 

 ranche, will, not a little astonished, learn the fact that the 



