60 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



While these great changes have been going on in the improve- 

 ment of agriculture, the development of its resources, and the 

 establishment of all means for internal trade, the relations of 

 the agriculture of the different sections of our country, one to 

 another, have also changed. In 1840 more than two-thirds 

 of the crop of Indian corn was raised in the slaveholding 

 States, and but a very small portion of it was exported. The 

 cotton-growing States at that time depended very much upon 

 their own resources for feeding their people, supplying themselves 

 with manufactured goods and luxuries from the North and 

 from foreign countries. In the lapse of twenty years all this had 

 changed. AVhen the war broke out the cotton-growing States 

 supplied themselves with meats and breadstuffs, hay, apples, 

 potatoes, horses and mules from the "West. From the Eastern 

 States they purchased most of their manufactured goods, their 

 bale-rope and bagging, their engines, sugar-mills and cotton- 

 gins, much of their material for house-building, and mechanics 

 to erect them, their paper, their books, their teachers, their 

 shipping, their capital. In return the West and East consumed 

 their cotton, sugar and rice. An immense domestic trade had 

 sprung up, of such a character as to furnish a market for the 

 special products of each section, whether drawn from the soil 

 or created by the ingenuity of the people. Since the breaking 

 out of the war this relation has changed, but not to such an 

 extent that the return of peace will not re-establish the old 

 order of things. I anticipate an increase of agricultural enter- 

 prise, now that the Federal government has secured its le- 

 gitimate control on this continent, such as has seldom been 

 witnessed — even greater than that which grew out of the war 

 itself. There is no reason why our vast agricultural produc- 

 tions should not again enter into the commerce of the world, 

 whenever the necessity for the present large supply at home 

 shall cease and labor shall return to its accustomed channels. 

 The application of energetic labor to the cotton plantations of 

 the South, and the restoration of that great staple to the list 

 of our productions, for home consumption and export, will 

 constitute a branch of industry which will open immense wealth 

 to our peo})lc. The West will once more feel the effect of that 

 opening market upon her grain crops. The stimulus given to 

 Eastern manufactures will furnish the New England farmer 



