ADDRESS 



BY PROF. S. T. FROST, 



PRINCIPAL OF SOUTH BERKSHIBE INSTITUTE, NEW MARLBORO, MASS. 



SUBJ]£GT :—'' NEW ENGLAND FARMING RESTORED 



Mr. President and Members of the Association: — When I was iuvitcd 

 to address the farmers of Berkshire, the maturest agricultural commuuity per- 

 haps in America, — to meet them in their bi^st representative character, I was not, 

 I trust, insensible to the honor conveyed ; but I have received a new impression 

 since I have seen the high degree of estimati(^n which this association enjoys, 

 the respect it receives (aud ixacts) fjoui all. Remembering many others, I 

 alHrm this occasion in this respect to be distinct and peculiar. In whatever else 

 I may fail you to-day, I shall not lack in respect. 



The first product of American Agriculture, — the first that expanded into 

 an export — came from the Virginia tobacco fields. Rich and quick profits stim- 

 ulate culture, and the hungry, exhaustive tobacco plants fed upon the richness 

 of the forest soil with all the insatiable greediness of Solomon's "daughters of 

 the horse-leech." And when they dropped off, gorged from the drained soil, 

 the Old Dominion planter like Milton's shepherd found "fresh fields and pas- 

 tures new." The terrible method passed over the land like locusts, or a tire, 

 leaving individuals very rich, but a community of these same individuals very 

 poor ; and finally in less than a century the poverty of the State has reacted 

 upon the individual, for no state can long be rich if the lands are poor, and the 

 farm, the farmer and the Commonwealth arc all poor together. 



I have located my illustration in another State for obvious reasons. It is 

 better to philosophize on our neigh l)or's faults than on our own. We get the 

 advantage of broad perspective which distance gives. "Tis distance lends en- 

 chantmejjjt to the view." But seriously we might have found an illustration 

 nearer home. Those magnificient reaches of hard-hack, those extended vistas of 



