ADDRESS. 11 



I propose, then, very briefly to speak of these general princi- 

 ples, maxims, and rules, in their application to farming, thus 

 giving you what I may call a business man's view of farming as 

 a business. 



There are three grand divisions or classes of biisiness men — 

 merchants who simplj'- buy and sell, delivering to on(^ man, with 

 out substantial change of form, what they received of another ; 

 manufacturers who bu^^ in one form, and, by the apphcation of 

 labor, change to another, usually more complex, before selling; 

 and agriculturists, who, without change of form or nature, inul- 

 tiply their products by skilfully subjecting the originals to the 

 operations of natural causes. To one of these three classes, 

 every business man either belongs, or is directly or i)idirectly 

 subsidiary. 



It is quite curious to reflect upon the magnitude of some of these 

 dependent branches. Thus the merchant needs monej', occasion- 

 ally in large quantities, and beyond his immediate resources. 

 The banking interest, witli its untold millions of capital, has for its 

 sole work the ministering to these wants, and the facilitation of 

 exchanges between individuals and nations. The bunker is, so 

 to speak, simply the cashier of the merchant. 



The transportation interest, employing an almost incalculable 

 capital, including as it does, the railroads whose trains are trav- 

 ersing the country in every direction, and the numberless steam 

 and sailing vessels whose smoke and whose sails, alterucitely 

 blacken and whiten the surface of Ocean, is based upon the 

 necessities of trade. The manufacturer of one country must 

 have the raw material of another brought to liim, and tlie mer- 

 chant who sells the goods, must have some means of delivering 

 them to the customers who buy them. Thus vast and overshadow- 

 ing as is this interest, railroads and steamships are but job wagons 

 on a large scale. The countrj^ trader who sends his one horse 

 wagon into the farming districts with a barrel of flour whicli he 

 exchanges for a load of potatoes, differs only in degree, not at 

 all in principle, from the shipping merchant, who sends his ves- 

 sels to all quarters of the globe, v/ith lumber, cotton cloth, and 

 Yankee notions, and loads them home 'vith products of countries 

 foreign to his own. 



The commission business, whicli has attained collossal propor- 

 tions, grows out of the necessities of the manufacturer,who, locating 

 his factory with reference to cheapness of labor, nearness of raw 

 material and general economy of management, rather than con- 

 tiguity to his customers, is forced to employ an agent to hunt up 



