70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



culture is indeed the basis of all our material relations. Three- 

 fifths of the people of our country, or two million four hundred 

 thousand of our free male population, are engaged in tilling 

 the soil, and over three-fifths of the permanent wealth is in their 

 hands. The prosperity of the country is based upon the pros- 

 perity of the owners and tillers of the soil. The annual agri- 

 cultural products of the United States are estimated at over 

 one thousand millions of dollars. 



It is the progress of agriculture that calls for internal im- 

 provements. The sons of New England farmers emigrate 

 West, clear up woodlands, break up extensive prairies, make 

 them yield golden harvests, build up villages and cities, school- 

 houses and churches ; and then behold in their pathway west- 

 ward, canals and railroads, lakes and navigable rivers, all made 

 subservient to the farmer's wants. Thus the products of the 

 West give an impulse to every eastern enterprise, and the suc- 

 cess or failure of the crop, is the thermometer that marks the 

 prosperity or adversity of individuals, communities and the 

 whole country. 



How truly then, is agriculture the mother of all arts, the 

 foundation and basis of every other profession. And how 

 important is the position which you as farmers occupy. 



The mechanic and the manufacturer are intimately connected 

 with the farmer. While the mechanic invents and builds 

 machinery and implements, the manufacturer works the fabric 

 which the farmer produces into a form in wiiich it will best 

 supply the comforts and the luxuries of civilized life. 



Through the genius and skill of the mechanic, a grand revo- 

 lution has been wrought in the implements of agriculture, 

 during the last thirty years, and comparing our present facili- 

 ties for cultivating the soil and for manufacturing, with what 

 they were formerly, it is estimated that five-sixths of the manual 

 labor is saved in producing the same results. 



If we compare the old iron share and wooden mould-board 

 plough in use in the days of our fathers, with the almost perfect 

 forms of this most important implement now in use, we can 

 hardly suppress our surprise at the progress made in this respect. 

 And so with the harrow, the cultivator, the horse-rake, and the 

 mowing and reaping machines. A man standing on an emi- 

 nence in Rock county, Wisconsin, counted on the surrounding 



