AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



HISTORY OF THE ESSEX COUNTY AGRICUL- 

 TURAL SOCIETY. 



From an Address before the Essex Agricultural Society. 



BY GEO. B, LORIKG. 



The progresfj which Essex County has made during the life- 

 time of this society should not be forgotten ; nor should the 

 growth of that country of which it forms a part, and in which 

 its intellectual and physical activity has had so large a share. 

 In 1818, when the organization of this society first occurred to 

 Timothy Pickering, the republic to whose existence he had de- 

 voted all his early powers had hardly commenced its career of 

 prosperity. It had just come out of an exhausting war — its 

 second struggle for position among the nations of the earth. A 

 narrow strip of land between the Atlantic and the Alleghanies 

 contained nearly all its valuable and productive industry. The 

 great cities of the West were unknown ; the valleys and prairies 

 were lying idle ; the coal-fields were unexplored ; the mineral 

 wealth of the Pacific slope was unheard of ; manufactures were 

 in their feeblest infancy ; and the most vigorous commerce 

 under the American flag was carried on by the citizens of Essex 

 County, who poured the wealth of the great fishing grounds, 

 and of Ormus and the Ind, into the diminutive harbors of Salem 

 and Marblehead and Newbury port. The entire revenue of this 

 country was then less than $30,000,000 annually. Prosperous 

 as Essex County Avas in that early day, paying nearly one- 

 seventh of the entire State tax, she had less than 70,000 inhab- 

 itants, had no manufacturing nor mechanical interests, had not 

 a steam-engine within her limits, had not a cotton mill, and but 



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