528 MASS. BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



should not wield a needless ounce. If any part is heavier than 

 necessary, even to the amount of half an ounce only, he must 

 repeatedly and continually lift this half ounce, so that the 

 whole strength thus spent, would be equal in a day, to twelve 

 hundred and fifty pounds, which ought to be exerted in stir- 

 ring the soil, and destroying the weeds." 



The same principle is applicable to most of the other small 

 implements of the farm. Great improvements have been 

 made in the shovel and manure fork. It is probably safe to 

 say that nearly double the amount may be accomplished in a 

 given time with a six, eight, or ten-tined fork, in most kinds of 

 work where a shovel has formerly been used, than can be doiie 

 with the shovel itself, and this, too, with greater ease to the 

 opeiator. And to use the forcible language of another, " in no 

 direction can we grasp more aid than in gathering about us all 

 good and necessary tools. Parsimony here is ruin ; a liberal 

 and judicious expenditure is a precursor of success." 



The patent laws have been a powerful auxiliary to the ef- 

 forts of the agricultural societies, in stimulating the ingenuity 

 of inventors. By securing to the inventor the exclusive ben- 

 efit of his invention, they enable him to enrich himself, while 

 he is benefitting the public. Agriculture owes many of the 

 most useful inventions, designed to facilitate the labors of the 

 the farm, to this healthy and proper stimulus furnished by the 

 laws. 



If our fathers fifty years ago, had foreseen the amount of im- 

 migration to this country, instead of making laws to protect 

 patent rights from infringement in order that ingenuity and la- 

 bor might reap their due reward, they probably would have 

 enacted •" stringent laws against inventions, in fear that the la- 

 borer would be thrown out of employment and come upon the 

 parish for support. Cotton cloth was then thirty or forty cents 

 a yard ; a girl's wages fifty cents a week. Now a girl's wages 

 are often three to five dollars a week, which will purchase forty 

 or fifty yards of cloth. The inventive genius of the country 

 seems to be, for the most part, concentrated in New England, 

 thougVi some of the most beneficial inventions have started in 

 other parts. And the inventive power of the people of New 



