332 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



fairly entitled. And this advantage inures to the buyer as well 

 as the seller, and gives character and stimulus to tlie market. 



In the fourth place, in connection with this benefit and closely 

 allied to it, is the healthy emulation which is excited by bring- 

 ing different specimens of the same products into comparison 

 with one another. Competition of the right kind at once 

 springs up — a competition to excel in the quality of the article 

 produced and not merely in the price obtained for it. The man 

 who has been contented to produce an ordinary article, because 

 he has generally obtained a good price for it, or because he has 

 never seen any thing superior to it, is stimulated by the success 

 of his neighbor, both as to the quality and price of his products, 

 to produce a better ; whilst the other, to maintain his advantage 

 and to avoid the mortification of being surpassed by his com- 

 petitor, increases liis skill and pains-taking. It is thus that 

 progress in all the arts is effected, and it is only thus that 

 progress in the important art of agriculture is to be achieved. 



Besides this beneficial result, these fairs would tend to diffuse 

 information, just as our cattle shows do, by promoting inter- 

 course between men engaged in a common pursuit, and bring- 

 ing their minds into contact on subjects connected with it. 

 Inquiry into the different processes by which results are 

 obtained in the various branches of husbandry is thus excited, 

 and the why and the wherefore ©f each are freely discussed. 

 It cannot be otherwise than that the farmer must return from 

 these fairs a wiser man, or if he thought that all wisdom would 

 die with him, that this conceit must be rubbed out of him by 

 the friction to which he has there been subjected. It often 

 happens, for want of this intercourse among farmers, this 

 interchange of opinions and mutual comparison of skill and 

 intelligence, that individuals exhibit an overweening pride in 

 respect of certain processes or products, which is not warranted 

 by facts and is simply ridiculous. One of these self-sufficient 

 farmers, who had always in his own estimation the best of every 

 thing, was heard to utter the boast, when speaking of the 

 prospects for a hay crop, " that he should have had the best in 

 the county, if his hay-seed had only caught!" 



There is no denying that as a class our farmers are set in 

 their opinions, whether well or ill founded, and this arises as 

 much fi'om their living comparatively by themselves, as from 



