AGRICULTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 3 



turing industry. The farmers of Essex are met at Lawrence, 

 one of the principal and busiest centres of this industry in our 

 county. I am sure I interpret their feelings rightly, when I 

 acknowledge the generous social and official hospitality which 

 has been extended to them. Permit me in most of the obser- 

 vations I shall present to you, to prolong the courtesy of this 

 acknowledgment, by considering in some of its phases the 

 dependence of agriculture upon the arts to which this city is 

 devoted. In suggesting the dependence of agriculture, let me 

 not seem to derogate from its just praise. On the contrary, the 

 highest dignity is claimed for it in the assertion of its greatest 

 dependence. The place of loftiest elevation is dependent upon 

 all below that sustains it. Agriculture is the highest art only 

 by virtue of its power of making all the other arts and indus- 

 tries subservient to itself. " The glorious privilege of being 

 independent," of which the poet sings, is a moral not a social 

 independence. Let the farmer rejoice in this privilege, and in 

 the many circumstances of his life by which the virtue also is 

 nourished. The philosophy, however, that claims for the 

 farmer's vocation, and as a ground of especial congratulation, 

 that it makes him independent of society and the aid of his 

 fellow-men engaged in other employments, is based upon a 

 mistake of fact and an erroneous conception of the principles of 

 human progress. What can be more unfounded in fact ? The 

 farmer contracts with the carpenter and mason for his house 

 and barn ; he buys his furniture, clothing, meat, flour, imple- 

 ments, frequently his bread, butter, cheese and grain ; and from 

 the islands of the Pacific, material is brought in ships to fertil- 

 ize his lands. Probably there is not a farmer in Massachusetts 

 who could keep himself alive, by farming on his present system, 

 without drawing upon external resources. It is with the farmer 

 as with other classes of men, his advancement in his vocation 

 is proportionate to the extent he is aided by other employments. 

 The advancement of society is always marked by increasingly 

 diversified mutuality of social dependence. This is the law of 

 progress. It is but the manifestation, in the larger relations of 

 life, of the principle of the division of labor, that in proportion 

 as men become civilized, their pursuits should be diversified. 

 The traditional ascription to the farmer of a peculiar social 

 independence is derived from a state of society existing in Mas- 



