GOOD OLD TIMES. 17T 



shire County was in possession of a single woollen or cotton 

 mill. There may have been, at the time that Elkanah Watson 

 gathered his little band together here on this village green for 

 the purpose of holding an agricultural exhibition, a single 

 woollen mill somewhere in this county, to which he proposed to 

 carry his small Merino fleeces for the purpose of having them 

 manufactured into cloth. But the business of manufacturing, 

 in this county and in this whole State, was in the hands of pri- 

 vate individuals. You can go to-day into the secluded spots of 

 this town and others, and find the old implements with which 

 your mothers manufactured the cloth which, colored with splen- 

 did and beautiful hues, adorned your fathers on their way to 

 church or town meeting. That is the way manufacturing was 

 carried on here. It was agriculture that lay at the foundation 

 of the whole business ; and so profitable and prosperous was it, 

 that in my own county, I am happy to say, the record gives us 

 one hundred seventeen and one-half bushels of corn to the acre 

 — almost vieing with Berkshire County ; eight hundred bushels 

 of Swedes ; one thousand bushels of mangolds ; three and one- 

 half tons of hay ; six or seven hundred bushels of triumphant 

 potatoes. What times for farming those were ! And so suc- 

 cessful was the farming industry of this Commonwealth and the 

 rest of the States of this Union, that when our country emerged 

 from the Revolutionary war, with a great war debt resting upon 

 it, it was out of large agriculture, scattered up and down the 

 Atlantic coast, and small commerce, bringing its wealth into a 

 few little ports in Essex County, almost alone — I say it was out 

 of large agriculture and small commerce that the patriotic 

 fathers drew that wealth with which they paid a large propor- 

 tion of the Revolutionary war debt before a quarter of a century 

 had passed away. 



So I say it is not because the farming of this State has not 

 been successful that we are establishing an agricultural college 

 here ; it is not because the farmers of this State are ignorant of 

 certain principles of agriculture upon which, heretofore, they 

 have been successful, that this college has been established ; but 

 it is because, under the trials of modern agriculture, the best 

 education is necessary in order to enable the farmers of the 

 State to carry on their business profitably and successfully. It 



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