26 ' MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



sors ; and it is nothing less than this to convert into stocks and 

 bonds those properties of the soil which render it capable of 

 furnishing subsistence for man and beast. 



Were every holder of land to make haste to be rich by bar- 

 tering its fruitfulness for money, the earth would, in time, 

 become but a barren waste. True, such a result is not imme- 

 diately possible, because of the absence of labor and the want of 

 a market. But it will become possible at some day, perhaps not 

 distant, and the tendencies of the times are far too manifestly 

 in that direction. Even now, all available muscle, human and 

 brute, all the appliances of mechanism, all the power of steam, 

 aided and intensified by the restless activity of merchants, the 

 ceaseless competition of railroad and navigation companies, and 

 the far-reaching but possibly short-sighted schemes of boards of 

 trade, are brought into requisition for gathering in and trans- 

 porting abroad the life-sustaining capacity of the yet unexhausted 

 soil of the Great West, to be exchanged for foreign merchandise, 

 much of which is useless, some pernicious, and all of slight 

 worth when compared with its cost in the present and the 

 future. Tlie uncivilized red man bartered his land for glass 

 beads, scarlet cloth and brass kettles, and exulted in the posses- 

 sion of such priceless treasures. The enlightened white man 

 exchanges his, (or what is practically the same, the constituents 

 essential to its fertility,) for similar gewgaws, and he, too, exults 

 in his stores of glittering wealth. Verily, wisdom is not always 

 the handmaid of civilization. 



Political economists are ever dinning our ears with diatribes 

 on the evil results of sending abroad gold and silver in exchange 

 for the means of aping foreign fashions. That the results are 

 evil is indisputable. But to check this outgoing current of the 

 precious metals, they too often only urge increased production 

 and exportation of the great agricultural staples of the country, 

 and they have sometimes deemed themselves public benefactors 

 when aiding such productions by sustaining a system of com- 

 pulsory labor, and when furnishing facilities for such transpor- 

 tation by multiplying railroads and steam-ships. And yet it 

 would not be a wide departure from the truth to say that every 

 bushel of grain, and every bale of cotton or hogshead of tobacco 

 sent abroad, represents a diminished capacity in the soil for sus- 

 taining the dense population, which, but for such improvidence? 



