Address. 15 



department which they can fill) consume all our agricultural food 

 productions at home, and export only raw materials and manufac- 

 tured products. If these views are correct, as Massachusetts farm- 

 ers, the practical question to be decided by us, and reduced to a 

 system of action is, how we shall secure from the presence of a dense 

 manufacturing population on our territory, the highest possible ad- 

 vantage to ourselves, and afford them such facilities for their busi- 

 ness, that their interests will be alike promoted. Now the prime 

 wants of a manufacturing community like those which have sprung 

 up in our State, are first, food, and that not of the absolutely nec- 

 essary kinds, but its delicacies and luxuries ; second, raw material : 

 third, space, and power in the form of steam or water ; fourth, a 

 good market with facilities to reach it ; and fifth, good, cheap, first- 

 class advantages, for their moral and intellectual training and edu- 

 cation. 



Their last want can be supplied here better than anywhere else in 

 the country. Space and power is not exhausted ; with the room, 

 water and steam, they seem content. Our abundant railroad com- 

 munications give them tolerable facilities to both the inland and sea- 

 board markets, and to obtain such raw material as Ave cannot supply, 

 the cost of transporting, which may be paid by an advantage in some 

 other respect. Their food, we do not produce it, neither its necessi- 

 ties nor its luxuries, and they must look abroad for the supply and 

 pay for its transportation. 



Now, can we provide for this demand, or for any. and what, por- 

 j tion of it ? We should remember what the great producing west 

 will be sure to supply, and avoid competing with their special crops 

 and mode of culture. The system of the competing culture is of the 

 utmost importance, for no man who is so managing his land that it 

 is constantly increasing in fertility, can compete with him, whose 

 plan and practice is to take up rich fields, produce crops at the ex- 

 pense of the soil, and to sell out and remove when its fertility shall 

 measurably fail. The west, with the fact looking them full in the 

 face, that their crops are annually decreasing, are selling grain, and 

 in all probability are bound to do so, so long as there remain so many 

 untilled acres to be despoiled. Pork and beef also, the feeding at 

 home of which is a great improvement in their mode of culture, will 



