THE FARMER'S ADVANTAGE. 85 



THE FARMER'S ADVANTAGE. 



Address before the Hoosac Valley Agricultural Society. 



BY A. L. PERRY. 



My topic is the Farmer's Advantage ; by which I mean the 

 tendency of all that the farmer has to sell to buy more and 

 more of all that he has to buy. There is a natural tendency 

 which God has inwrought into the framework of things, and 

 which science has demonstrated beyond a question, in accord- 

 ance with which a load ot hay, a bushel of wheat, a pound of 

 cheese, and all farm products whatsoever, tend perpetually to 

 buy more, rather than less, of cloth, of clocks, of cutlery, and 

 all manufactured articles whatsoever. This tendency I call the 

 farmer's advantage, because the things he has to sell are agri- 

 cultual, and the things he has to buy are manufactured. Unless 

 the natural and proper condition of things be thwarted by the 

 foolish legislation of men, the products of the farm will com- 

 mand, as time goes on, more and more of the products of the 

 factory. 



Let me illustrate in two or three articles the important natural 

 law of which I am speaking. At the beginning of this century 

 a pound of raw cotton was worth about twenty cents, and a yard 

 of cotton cloth about sixty cents ; consequently it took at that 

 time three pounds of the agricultural product to buy one yard 

 of the manufactured product. From that day to this the power 

 of a pound of cotton to buy cotton cloth has been steadily in- 

 creasing, until now, one pound of raw cotton will buy one yard 

 of cotton cloth. Seventy years ago it took three pounds, now 

 it takes but one pound. Thus the purchasing power of raw 

 cotton, the agricultural product, over cotton cloth, the manufac- 

 tured product, is three times as great now as it was then. The 



