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If you go to Philadelphia or Charleston, you will find a 

 market system which meets this difficulty ; gives the producer 

 an opportunity to bargain directly with the consumer and take 

 his fair share of the profits on what he has raised. I had the 

 privilege only three or four years ago of visiting almost all the 

 large markets in Europe, and there I found everywhere, that 

 no proud monopoly came in to assert its claims on what merely 

 passed through its hands ; tliat the poor farmer as well as the 

 rich, the one who had toiled little as well as the one who had 

 toiled much, could come into market and sell to the consumer, 

 saving a part of the three or four commissions which here vex 

 and annoy the public. Will the time never come when this 

 system can be adopted here ? 



In an address recently delivered at Providence, that indomit- 

 able soldier and Christian patriot, Maj. Gen. Howard, spoke 

 eloquently of Educated Labor as the great necessity of our 

 times. Now it would be perhaps ungracious to intimate that 

 farm labor in New England is not as educated and intelligent 

 as that in any other portion of the civilized world. Certainly 

 it ought to be, with our boasted system of common schools. 

 But somehow or other, the practical results, when compared 

 with those obtained in England and Scotland, do not seem to 

 justify such a conclusion. Farming in England is not only 

 intelligent, but we know it is profitable, for the tenant farmer 

 even can and does afford to pay from five to twenty-five dollars 

 per acre annual rent, and necessity compels him to bring the 

 highest degree of intelligence to bear upon his farming opera- 

 tions. If we admit, therefore, that it does not pay to be a 

 farmer here, it seems to me we admit the want of greater 

 intelligence in the management and the development of our 

 lands, for certainly the same intelligence ought to pay better 

 here than in England, on account of the numerous markets by 

 which we are surrounded, and which are so easily accessible, 

 and the lower cost which the ownership of land involves. 



But if we admit, for the sake of argument, that farm labor 

 is not as intelligent as it ought to be, and class this as another 

 of the defects of New England farming, we may, perhaps, 

 fairly except ourselves, for certainly the members of an agri- 

 cultural society are better posted and probably more intelligent 



