48 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ization, deterioration of manly and womanly character and 

 disposition to run with almost every form of excess so prevalent 

 in our large cities and towns ; whilst we are preparing our 

 children to offer them as citizens ready to participate in the 

 support and maintenance of the institutions of the country with 

 pure hearts, clear heads, and clean and healthy bodies, we should 

 be derelict in our duties to that country, and ourselves and pos- 

 terity, if we are not advancing in our business, making several 

 blades of grass grow where one has grown before, and in all 

 other respects increasing the means for supporting the popula- 

 tion of the Commonwealth. Although I am a firm believer in 

 the doctrine that to the man that hath godliness all other things 

 will be added thereunto, yet I as firmly believe that those addi- 

 tions will be the result of his own exertions. It won't do to 

 feel so righteous that, like the dervishes of the East, we are 

 content to wrap our ragged robes about us and stand for life on 

 a pillar of contentment. Enterprise is as essential to the calling 

 of a farmer as to that of any other vocation. 



Half a century ago, when the farmers of the country were 

 also the manufacturers ; when this society was composed by 

 law only of those two classes ; when the main premiums were 

 given for cloths and woven goods made by the farmers' wives, 

 and the only semblance of an invitation to horsemen to trot out 

 their animals was the annual premium of five dollars to a mule ; 

 when the society was so comfortable in numbers and feeling 

 that after the close of the fair all adjourned to an ample and 

 hospitable dinner, at which the recipients of the premiums had 

 the places of honor, and were pelted with eulogistic toasts, 

 Elkanah Watson, the president of the society, in his address 

 in the fall of 1813, during the war with Great Britain, (which, 

 whether rightfully or wrongfully opposed by New England, in 

 its results built up her manufacturing interests,) after alluding 

 with natural admiration to the fact that the President of the 

 United States and the United States frigate "President" were 

 both clothed from the woollen and duck looms of Pittsfield, 

 prophesied that Berkshire County was destined to become cele- 

 brated for its manufactures, particularly of woollens. You 

 know how completely that prophecy has been fulfilled, and 

 how since manufactures have become dissevered from agricul- 

 ture they have shot clear ahead. And we look with pride and 



