38 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



PROFITS OF FARMING. 



From an Address before the Worcester South Agricultural Society, Sept. 29, 1858. 



BY JOHN C. BARTLETT. 



When we look about us, we find all our farming towns present- 

 ing a common aspect which is far from being agreeable. A 

 constant exodus of our young men is in progress ; sometimes 

 the wave of emigration spreading itself over the western prairies, 

 and again surging towards the gold mines of California and 

 Australia; and when success in these points has failed, pouring 

 itself through every avenue of business in the cities, but still 

 ever flowing away from the old homesteads upon the green hills 

 of New England, until we are lost in amazement at the vast 

 number of young and earnest men who are thus fleeing from 

 the quiet pursuits of agriculture as from a pestilence. And if 

 we ask of them why they thus forsake the homes of their 

 youth, we are told that farming offers little or no inducement 

 in point of pecuniary profit. 



But not only do the young prefer any other occupation to 

 that of farmhig, but everywhere is the market glutted with 

 farms, many of them the largest and best in their respective 

 towns, the owners of which desire to change their business or to 

 try their fortune elsewhere, because, in spite of figures which 

 show great profits accruing on all crops raised upon the farm, 

 they have found themselves gradually going behind hand in their 

 pecuniary affairs. The main question to which I propose to ask 

 your attention, is, whether there is really any foundation in fact, 

 for the growing impression among the farmers, that their busi- 

 ness is not as lucrative as other branches of industry carried on 

 In the same town ? 



If a young man of good business capacity, enters upon 

 farming at the age of twenty-one, having a farm valued at two 



