ONE HAS DONE, ANOTHER MAY. 183 



Danvers and Marbleliead prosperous and independent. That is 

 special agriculture. It is the cranberry crop of Cape Cod, 

 where the intelligent and careful cultivator has turned the most 

 useless bogs into profitable acres. It is tobacco in the Connec- 

 ticut River Yalley. What an astonishing product ! — equal as 

 the Professor of Agriculture told us this morning, to almost all 

 the rest of the agriculture of the State ; superior to the dairy, 

 superior to gardening, and equal to almost all the other branches 

 of agricultural industry in this Commonwealth. That is a 

 specialty. It is breeding and feeding the choicest herds of 

 cattle. It is the careful breeding of Shorthorns, Devons, 

 Jerseys and Ayrshires. It is careful attention to the most 

 economical mode of feeding animals that makes our farmers 

 rich and prosperous. Go where you will, it is the adoption of 

 some specialty which has made the farmers of Massachusetts 

 able to sustain themselves. 



I have in my mind — and it is always before me when I am 

 speaking of the agricultural prosperity of Massachusetts — that 

 instance of a farmer in the town of Arlington, (I know some 

 of you have heard it before, but it is worth repeating over and 

 over again,) who, in 1835, purchased thirty-six acres of land 

 for $6,000, mortgaged the farm for the payment of one-half of 

 it, and was thought by his neighbors to be a madman. From 

 that time to this he has gone on devoting himself to the special 

 crops of that section, until he is worth to-day, with his accumu- 

 lations and his interest, $250,000, which he has wrung out of 

 that soil. Not quite as good as a Berkshire woollen mill, but it 

 will come up pretty nearly alongside of it. Every month in 

 the year he has a green crop — out of doors in summer, under 

 glass in winter — supplying the markets of New York and Bos- 

 ton with the choicest vegetables. 



Now, gentlemen, the business that has been done there by 

 that farmer can be done elsewhere, and has been done else- 

 where, perhaps to a less degree. It is by devotion to these 

 special crops, to which the markets are adapted, — to small 

 fruits, to market gardening, to tobacco, to onions, to cranber- 

 ries, to the breeding and feeding of the cattle best adapted to 

 the production of beef in beef regions, and of milk in dairy 

 regions, — that the farmers of Massachusetts are able to get 

 their living. 



