4 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



sachusetts, within the recollection of persons here present, when 

 the wool and flax grown by him were spun and woven into 

 garments by his household, and the crops were mainly consumed 

 on the farm upon which they were raised. But independence 

 like this is the independence of an undeveloped social life ; one 

 that is still found, though in a ruder form, in the log cabins 

 upon our western frontier ; one that increases as man departs 

 from civilization, and reaches its extreme limit in the American 

 Indian and the African Hottentot. The higher the organization 

 of social life, the more each works for all and all for each, and 

 in so doing each works most efficiently for himself ; the deeper 

 and tenderer, too, becomes the sentiment of a common humanity 

 that pervades all classes. 



It was agriculture that established the fixed condition of life, 

 and the possibility of the minute division and distribution of 

 employments. But mechanical and manufacturing industry, 

 when thus established as a distinct department of labor, reacts 

 at once upon agriculture, and gives it a new and rapid develop- 

 ment. It creates the demand for a surplus of food to sustain 

 the mechanic, who no longer supplies himself. As the propor- 

 tion of society devoted to agriculture diminishes, its efficiency 

 must be strengthened. From that surplus of food beyond his 

 own wants which he raises for the new industry, he improves 

 his own condition, and increases the productiveness of his own 

 labor by better implements. He becomes able to devote himself 

 exclusively to the raising of crops, and leaves to the mechanic 

 and manufacturer to do for him, what they are able to do with 

 greater skill, and at less cost. The progress of agriculture, until 

 within a short period of time, has been the effect almost exclu- 

 sively of improved implements, and consequently has directly 

 depended upon the progress of mechanical art. Until the 

 mechanic has fashioned the tools with which the farmer can clear 

 of its stubborn and luxuriant growths the soil best fitted for him, 

 the mould of the valley and the plain, he is compelled to work 

 on the poorest land, because least obstructed by vegetation. The 

 development of the capabilities of the soil by culture at increas- 

 ing depths, is measured by the difference between the sharpened 

 stick of the farmer drawn through the earth and leaving a shal- 

 low scratch one or two inches deep, and the iron plough of the 

 mechanic exhibited here to-day, which gouges a furrow to the 



