36 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



hills and valleys to lie still and witness what we could do for the 

 agriculture of others. We have withdrawn our forces from our 

 own fields, in order to build up markets for others ; and we seem 

 to have forgotten that while we have enlarged their wealth, and 

 given value to the productions of their soil, and furnished chan- 

 nels for their capital, we have neglected our own. And will you 

 tell me where in this crisis the trial is the harder — in Iowa, 

 where corn is worth but ten cents a bushel, or in Massachu- 

 setts, where the loom' is silent, and the laborer is waiting for 

 the dawn ; in the West, where is the producer, or in the East, 

 where is the consumer of the necessaries of life ? If you ask 

 me who can do the most towards paying the bills of a war, 

 that is one question ; if you ask who can best support its popu- 

 lation during a long and harassing conflict, that is another and 

 very different question. What I desire for Massachusetts is 

 the power to do both, and to fulfil to the highest degree that 

 duty which she has taken upon herself of being foremost in 

 the defence of Federal authority, and the government of the 

 fathers, and in which her sons have crowned her with new and 

 more refulgent glory. 



Increase then your crops. Do you ask what crops ? I say 

 every thing that grows well here for the sustenance of man 

 and animal ; for this is what we need most. Our climate and 

 soil are peculiary adapted to grain, hay and pasturage. North 

 of thirty-six degrees north latitude, these arc the staples. 

 And they lie at the foundation of all that constitutes the 

 necessary food for man ; offering every inducement to steady 

 and devoted labor ; and inasmuch as they have but little to do 

 with foreign commerce, and the fluctuations that attend it, they 

 offer none of the temptations to a restless and extravagant com- 

 munity, which attend the production and sale of raw materials 

 for manvifacture and luxuries. 



We can raise corn here at a profit — not twenty-five or thirty 

 bushels to the acre, but seventy-five or one hundred bushels — 

 a crop attainable by every good farmer, and just as easily 

 produced as a smaller one. It is a most valuable product, 

 convertible as it is, into beef, pork, mutton, and bread, and 

 furnishing almost every thing necessary for the support of 

 animal life on the farm. As I pass along the road in almost 

 every section of the State, I see everywhere neglected lands, 



