49 



and workshops, it is also as truly a common field, which capital, and in- 

 dustry, and experiment, are rapidly bringing to the highest perlection of 

 cultivation. "J'hese different agencies must support each other. 



In some brief remarks made at a similar show in another County, last 

 ■week, it was my opportunity to allude to the importance of our landed 

 estates in the relations of their value to the value of other j^roperty under 

 our system of political economy. And here, on the present occasion, I 

 may call your attention to the importance of pushing the cultivation of the 

 land to its largest capacity, and of keeping tlie ranks of the agricultural 

 class good and full, if we would preserve the unities and proportions of our 

 present social and political condition as a State. 



The statistics of our industry, collected during the last year, and just now 

 published, exhibit an annual production in this State of the value of five hun- 

 dred and seventeen millions of dollars. ■ This, certainly, is a remarkable re- 

 sult; and when it becomes known in L(5ndon, it cannot fail to strengthen the 

 confidence already felt there in our securities, which are held bj' British capi- 

 talists in large amounts. Undoubtedly, some little abatement should be 

 made from the force with which these returns would at first strike an un- 

 thoughtful person, on account of the exceptional high prices of the raw 

 material consumed at the time in this production. This, for example, is 

 especially true of cotton, leather and wool, Avhich represent our three great- 

 est departments of producing industry. And yet, against this fact we 

 must also place the great rise in the price of labor, which will go far to 

 neutralize that of the raw staples used in our manufactures. So that I fully 

 believe, after a careful examination of ]\Ir. Secretary Warner's volume of 

 statistics, and taking as the present standard what we may reasonably sup- 

 pose may be the average price of stock and labor for some years to come, 

 that the ])rodueing j)ower of Massachusetts is not to be rated much below 

 five hundred millions of dollars. And now here I cull another fact from 

 this book of industries, which I welcome with special pride, and mention 

 for special encouragement. It is the fact, that in the last ten years the 

 productive forces of agriculture in ]\Iassachusetts, estimated by their value, 

 have Increased even more largely than all the others. In 1855 they were 

 not far from thirty -six millions ; in 1SG5 they were about seventy millions. 

 AVhile the other pursuits have advanced at the rate of about two-fifths in- 

 crease upon the result shown in the previous decade, agriculture has, in the 

 same period, very nearly doubled. I regard this as the highest proof which 

 the people of the State could have given of their appreciation of the neces- 

 sity of maintaining the agricultural element as a department and a power 

 in this Commonwealth, where we all know It has heretofore been hard 

 work to maintain it. 



We have the fact, then, before us that in Massachusetts, emphatically a 

 commercial and manufacturing connnunity, always destined to be such, 

 and deriving her power in this union of States from being such, while these 

 other capacities and occupations have been augmented with amazing rapid* 



