Address. 19 



cultivate for market, all the crops our soil and climate will produce. 

 will signally fail of that high success to which he might attain, if his 

 attention and study were directed to the perfecting of a single crop. 

 The evil is two-fold. First in the cultivation, and next in marketing 

 his produce. Concentration of skill and energy is essential to suc- 

 cess, but he scatters himself and his power over a great variety of 

 objects, and his blows are not effective at any of them. He does not 

 have the best appliances for successful cultivation as he would have 

 if his object was single ; he cannot so divide and train his labor as 

 to make it skillful, and the proper cultivation and care of one crop 

 is continually interfering with another. So in marketing his pro- 

 ducts, he has so little of a kind to sell and that not of the best, that 

 lie is unable to seek the best market ; nor can he create one, for he 

 is not a reliable producer. He is in the hands of the middleman, 

 and of the market, whatever it is ; for his products of each sort are 

 so limited in amount that he can have no control of it, or influence, 

 except to depress it and injure others. In this case, also, the cost of 

 marketing is a large share of the gross proceeds, for it takes as much 

 time to sell each of his kinds of produce as it would if he had ten or 

 a hundred times as much to sell. Now instead of pursuing agricul- 

 tural business in this way, let the farmer select one or two branches 

 of culture which would follow each other in rotation, for which he 

 .has a taste, the pursuit of which surrounding circumstances favor : 

 procure the best appliances and skill known ; by thought, care and 

 study, discover new and better methods ; bend all his power and 

 thoughts to make the best article and the greatest quantity at the 

 cheapest cost, and he will, in a measure, control or make his market, 

 and have no occasion to complain that other pursuits are more remu- 

 nerative than his. 



Finally, if the Massachusetts Farmer would make the most of his 

 advantages, he must educate himself for his business, and for the po- 

 sition which the wants of this intelligent age demand. That general 

 intelligence and special education of a high order are essential to the 

 successful pursuit of agriculture, would seem to be an axiom to which 

 nil would assent. But the fact is far otherwise. The shadow of a 

 darker age than the one in which we now live, yet overspreads and 

 lingers upon us. and often in this matter darkens the understanding 



