230 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ence but is well versed in the art; but for complete and perfect 

 success — for the highest advancement — both should be com- 

 bined. This, then, is one reason why we should turn our atten- 

 tion more to the art of agriculture ; because most of those who 

 are leading us in this agricultural awakening talk to us only of 

 the science of agriculture. There is another reason. I appeal 

 to you, practical farmers of Massachusetts — you who till or who 

 even superintend your own farms at the present day — do you 

 not find that to-day there is an almost absolute famine of real 

 skilled, practical agricultural artisans ? Where to-day can be 

 hired, for love or money, men qualified to go upon your farms 

 and perform, in a workmanlike manner, all the various manip- 

 ulations of agriculture ? Where are the men, Mr. President, 

 that you can hire to-day whom you would trust to go out upon 

 your hillsides there in Concord and trim a vineyard ? Where 

 can you find them ? I do not believe there are many men in 

 this room you would be willing to trust there. It is so with 

 your orchards. Where are the men who are skilled in the use 

 of the various hand-tools of a farm, who know what they are 

 and what they are made for, and then have the skill to use them 

 in such a way as to accomplish the greatest results with the 

 least outlay of physical force ? Is it not rare to find such men ? 

 It may seem to some of you a very queer assertion to say that 

 hardly one-half of these farmers, men who have followed the 

 plough all their days, know how to hold a plough to-day ; yet 

 I verily believe it is a fact. Half of the men who have been 

 ploughing fifty years do not know how to guide a plough — a 

 simple, plain instrument as that is. Some men whom I know 

 can tell when a person takes hold of a plough whether he is a 

 ploughman or not. You will see a vast difference between 

 a man who does not know how to guide a plough and one who 

 does, when they take hold of the implement. In the one case 

 the man who knows nothing of the plough, and has no skill as 

 an artisan to guide it, comes up to his plough as if it was a 

 grisly bear — as if it was some animal that was absolutely to be 

 held, and if it was not held would get away from him. When 

 he once gets hold of it, he jerks it to the left and to the right, 

 and then plunges its nose into the ground, and then jerks it 

 out again, and at all times he works one way, his plough works 

 another, and his team another. The unskilled ploughman is 



