should extend its agriculture is of vast national concern. The Agricultural 

 Department of the United States expended nearly three hundred and forty thou- 

 sand dollars for the year 1875, exclusive of gratuitous labor, estimated at near- 

 ly two hundred thousand dollars. The crop of maize alone covered an area of 

 nearly forty-five millions of acres, and exhibits the curious fact that an increase 

 of 500,000,000 of bushels over the preceding year, or nearly ten per cent., low- 

 ered the price so much that less than five and a half millions of dollars was 

 added to the aggregate value of the crop. This is a valuable hint as to over- 

 production of any single crop. 



Prices are so much higher in Massachusetts than in the great grain produ- 

 cing states, that she may well expect to hold her own, while the cost of trans- 

 portation from the west may produce almost the prohibitory effect that custom 

 houses and tariff charges our frontiers create in Europe. The farms of Massa- 

 chusetts are nearly forty-five th(»U8and; ^nd it is a hopeful political indication 

 as showing many small freeholds that nearly three thousand of these little farms 

 are only from three to ten acres in extent. The value of the horses is nearly 

 six millions of dollars, and that of the milch cows is more than six millions of 

 dollars. More than a million of hens and chickens iu the state prove that there 

 is no lack of material for a hen convention. The hay crop shows a value of 

 twelve millions of dollars; and the increased production per acre in many pro- 

 ducts shows how fast we are approaching the invaluable secret of making two 

 blades of grass grow where one grew before. The product of the farms of the 

 state was in 1875 nearly forty millions in gold. Whether the increase of per- 

 centage per acre in producti<m, which in some crops reaches thirty per cent, of 

 average increase per acre is connected with the valuable scientific knowledge 

 disseminated by the agricultural colleges or not, this increase is very full of hope. 

 It indicates better farming, and suggests economized labor and a reduced 

 burden in farm taxation on a smaller number of acres. It recalls the lesson 

 of the old song, " A little farm well tilled;" and is probably in many 

 cases connected with " a little wife well willed." It is trom this domestic 

 and homelike relation of numerous small, well managed homesteads, the 

 stability of society, that agriculture derives its paramount importance to 

 this great republic. It is more than thirty years since the pencil of Leech, 

 in the London Punch, thrilled the public mind with a sketch of surpassing 

 power that can never be forgotten. Before such master hands stirred the 

 hearts of men by a few strokes of a crayon, there was wit and wisdom 

 in the saying, "Let me make the songs for a people and I care not who 

 makes their laws." But now, songs and sermons and laws, pale before 

 the power of an illustrated newspaper, to thrill the eye and mind with an elec- 

 tric shock. A rude sketch that tells its satirical or agonizing story at a glance 

 is more than law-maker or sermon. It is never forgotten. The picture to which 

 I refer presents an English hovel of the lowest, laborer- tenant class. A single 

 room is shown, with a rude cupboard door thrown carelessly open and giving 

 a view of bare and empty shelves. On a square mound of rags and straw in a 

 corner, as decently arranged as misery can allow, lies the form of an ashy pale, 

 sharp featured woman, dead. Her hands are folded ; her face is bound up with 



