8 Address. 



by prejudice, neglect or unwise Government interference, is to the 

 injury of all. This will appear first, by a consideration of the ad- 

 vantages which agriculture may and doe3 receive in our State, from 

 the presence among us of so large a number of manufacturers and 

 artisans. From various causes, manufacturing in Massachusetts has 

 within the last decade made great advancement. The cotton interest 

 in its various departments ; the woolen and shoe interest, have rap- 

 idly increased, building towns and cities, and filling them with an 

 industrious, thriving population, where silence reigned in our boy- 

 hood. This population have abundance of profitable employment, 

 which brings them ample means of livelihood, but they produce no 

 food. The soil is the great fountain from which the food, the daily 

 bread of this dense manufacturing population, is to be supplied by 

 agricultural enterprise and labor. And it should be borne in mind 

 that this is not a pauper multitude, but one able and desirous to pay 

 for the necessaries to supply all their wants, as well as many of life's 

 luxuries. 



The business, then, of our agriculturist should be, first, to seize 

 hold of this great opportunity, and manufacture the food which is 

 demanded for consumption at their very doors, and then supply as 

 much as is possible of the raw material which is needed in our diver- 

 sified manufactures. What an incentive is here for agricultural 

 effort, and what an assurance of success if it be well directed. A 

 home market in our very midst, alongside the fields we cultivate, 

 demanding a daily supply of food, up to, — and even beyond the 

 present capacity of our soil to produce. The immense benefit of this 

 state of facts will be better appreciated if we compare the numbers 

 and wants of our consuming population, with the numbers of our 

 food producers. If our people have increased during the last decade, 

 as fast as they did from 1850 to 1860, our present population must 

 be not far from a million and a half. Of this number, including 

 farmers and farm laborers of every description, those who work for 

 the half as well as those who work the whole year, sixty-eight thou- 

 sand are engaged in the various departments of agriculture, or man- 

 ufacturing food for the hungry throng. From this data it appears 

 that the task assigned to each individual workman on the land, 

 whether he work for a longer or shorter time, be he man or boy, is 



