No. 4.] MAEKET GARDENING. 67 



may illustrate my point by a bit of my own history. When 

 I was seven years old I went to live in the town of Easton, 

 about ten miles from where we are now. Young as I was, I 

 learned a lesson in social and industrial economy that I can 

 never forget. Farming in those days just managed to hold 

 body and soul together by snapping a string now and then. 

 We lived on a little rocky place of three acres, with one 

 horse, a cow and possibly thirty stupid hens. We scratched 

 and hoed among the rocks in summer and cut the briers in 

 the graveyard for hay. Thirty years ago, if at this season 

 of the year we had a bin full of potatoes (Jackson AVhite) and 

 turnips, two barrels of apples and a barrel of cider, a bushel 

 of beans, a quintal of salt fish and a few sticks of " Taunton 

 turkeys," we were happy and care-free. 



How, then, were taxes and grocery bills paid, and how did 

 the old gentleman save up money to send out west to build 

 towns or railroads? In other words, what was our money 

 crop ? It was labor ! 



We sold our fingers and our brains into servitude to the 

 shoemaker. Once a week they brought to the farm a case 

 of uppers and a case of soles. We pegged them together 

 with wooden pegs, and they took them away for sale. That 

 is all over now, but to-day one of the most melancholy objects 

 on the New England farm to me is the little weather-beaten 

 shoe shop, which was formerly the block house from w^hich 

 they fought the wolf from the door. I can well remember 

 the time when our shoe business came to an end. It came 

 just as hundreds of other small individual enterprises have 

 been wiped out. It was a machine, — there is always some 

 combination force of steel and wooden fingers that comes close 

 to putting mind into the brute force of a water fiill or a steam 

 engine, — a machine did that work faster and better than we 

 could. I will admit that it made a cheaper and better shoe 

 than we could with our wooden pegs. The world was better 

 off for the change. I am not disposed to deny that, but did 

 not the world also lose something that it needed when those 

 old-time farmers lost their individuality, and when those 

 little shoe shops were nailed up or turned into hen roosts ? 

 I think so, and from that day to this it has hurt me to the 

 heart whenever great industrial chano-es have driven the small 



