340 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Let us now consider some of the objections that would be 

 likely to be urged against the establishing of these fairs. It 

 may be said, perhaps, that they propose too great an innovation 

 on the present modes of disposing of agricultural products, to 

 meet with much favor from the farming community. We all 

 know with what reluctance farmers quit long established habits 

 and practices, and how slow they are to make any change in 

 them. Nor can it be denied that a most radical change is here 

 proposed to them, and one which needs to have a fair start 

 given to it, in order to overcome the standing objections to 

 every new enterprise. To take again for illustration the case 

 of railroads. When they were first talked of, the conservative 

 men on all sides cried out against this change from the long 

 tried and well approved modes of travel on the public highway. 

 Those in any way interested in keeping things as they were, 

 joined in the cry of " let well enough alone." 



" But," says J. R. Williams, in an address before the 

 Michigan State Agricultural Society, in 1850, when speaking 

 of the old maxim that it is best to " let well enough alone," 

 " it depends upon what ' well enough ' means. As a maxim 

 for a farmer it is pernicious. I hold in my hand two peaches. 

 They grew upon trees which sprung from different pits of the 

 same original tree. This large, blushing, richly-tinted, melting, 

 thin-skinned, and small-stoned peach, is cultivated fruit. The 

 small, woolly, tough-skinned and large-stoned peach, is the nat- 

 ural fruit, the ' let well enough alone ' kind. I hold in my 

 hand two apples, plucked from the same tree, one from a 

 grafted, and one from a natural branch. One is the cultivated 

 fruit, the other is the ' let well enough alone ' kind. You per- 

 ceive the distinction is as marked in the apple as in the peach. 

 These are a type and fit illustration of progress and perfection 

 in every branch of agriculture." 



Notwithstanding the doubts of some, and the gloomy fore- 

 bodings of others, tlie railroads were started and they who at 

 first were most opposed to them, have been as ready as any to 

 avail themselves of their benefits. So it would most probably 

 be with these fairs ; once started under favorable circum- 

 stances, they would give the best proof, by actual experiment, 

 of their superiority over the present modes of selling and buy- 

 ing agricultural products. It would doubtless take time to 



