62 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



friable soil, with occasional applications of mineral manures in 

 solvent form. 



But again, if the Massachusetts farmer would make the most 

 of his advantages, he must enter fully into the spirit of this 

 wide-awake, competitive, driving age. No man now, who shuts 

 his eyes and moves at a snail's pace to prevent a catastrophe, 

 ought to expect or deserves to win. We are moving by the force 

 of steam, and with telegraphic speed, and with these modern 

 appliances we do it safely. As others do, so must the farmer, — 

 concentrate all his skill, intelligence and energy on one main 

 pursuit, and in this way command success. How successful, 

 think you, would be the manufacturer, who, in one and the same 

 establishment, and with the same set of hands, should attempt 

 to manufacture all the different kinds of cotton and woollen 

 goods, or to produce the different kinds with the same ma- 

 chinery ; who should add to his establishment the making of 

 cutlery, locomotives, machinery and every variety of Yankee no- 

 tions, instead of giving all his care, thought and study to the 

 production and perfection of one article, and the machine of its 

 manufacture ; or who should this year fill his establishment 

 with cotton machinery, run it a twelvemonth, then take it out 

 and put in that for the manufacture of woollens ; another, engage 

 in iron manufacture, and the next in plate glass ? Would he 

 succeed ? No ; he would, as he deserved, miserably fail in all ; 

 he would declare that manufacturing did not pay, and sell out 

 and go into other business, or move West. 



So, too, in agriculture ; the farmer who attempts to cultivate 

 for market all the crops our soil and climate will produce, will 

 signally fail of that high success to which he might attain if his 

 attention and study were directed to the perfecting of a single 

 crop. The evil is twofold. First in the cultivation, and next 

 in marketing his produce. Concentration of skill and energy is 

 essential to success, but he scatters himself and his power over a 

 great variety of objects, and liis blows are not effective at any of 

 them. He does not have the best appliances for successful cul- 

 tivation, as he would have if his object was single ; he cannot so 

 divide and train his labor as to make it skilful, and the proper 

 cultivation and care of one crop is continually interfering with 

 another. So in marketing his products ; he has so little of a kind 

 to sell, and that not of the best, that he is unable to seek the 



