146 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



the arm of industry. We have been living, in a considerable 

 degree, upon mere credit ; for all currency which is not con- 

 vertible into specie, or which does not represent Specie, or oth- 

 erwise available property of a productive character, or of a per- 

 manent value, is only credit. More than two-thirds of our 

 population, including children and aged persons, idle young 

 men, who do not earn the cigars which they smoke, and idle 

 young women, who hardly mend, much less knit, their own 

 stockings, and many of the professional classes and the trading 

 classes, who, though to a certain extent, among the most use- 

 ful in the community, and often among the most industrious 

 yet are to be placed with the unproductive, produce nothing. 

 Not more than one third of our population, this, indeed, is 

 probably not an unfair estimate, can be considered as productive ; 

 and upon them devolves the necessity of supporting the rest. 

 Now if the luxurious, or those who consum.e these articles of 

 luxury, could be induced or compelled by their own labor to 

 supply them, it would be indeed an immense saving to the 

 country ; and an immense gain in every way to the productive 

 classes, whose labor, much of which now goes to pay for these 

 luxuries, might then be determined into some more useful 

 channel. But who can expect this ? In the present condition 

 of things nothing is less likely, and nothing will bring men to 

 a sense, and what is of much more importance in the case, to 

 the performance of their duty, but absolute necessity. The 

 luxurious and spendthrift classes, who are the great consumers 

 of these foreign luxuries, will not work ; they will not produce 

 the silks they wear. The production, then, if produced at all 

 among us, must be from the laborious classes. There is, I admit, 

 a large portion of labor which against its inclination is unavail- 

 able ; or which would be applied if it could be profitably used. 

 This I except, and of this I shall speak presently. The question 

 then resolves itself into this. Shall our labor, now profitably 

 occupied and in full demand through every part of New Eng- 

 land, and where not even one tenth of our soil in Massachusetts 

 is cultivated, and that which is cultivated not one fourth so 



