No. 4.] NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 93 



richer, and if intelligently used need not become poorer ; 

 as witness the fact that the yield of wheat per acre in 

 France has doubled since 1789. In any inquiry, there- 

 fore, as to the future of agriculture, in New England or 

 elsewhere, so far as the future is to be contrasted with 

 the past or the present, nature may be left wholly out of 

 the account. What it has been it will continue to be. 

 The climate, the soil, the seasons will remain practically 

 unchanged, and will serve in the future the same basis 

 and groundwork as in the past for all the activities of 

 man. 



On the other hand, man, the second factor, changes in- 

 cessantly. Not only the slow and silent process of change 

 in the inner life of the individual, but the more obvious 

 change in the structure and movement of society — the 

 collective man — goes constantly forward. The progress 

 of both individual and collective man is a perpetual strug- 

 gle to understand, control and bring himself into better 

 adjustment with his material environment. The rate of his 

 progress is accurately measured by the increasing degree of 

 his control over the forces of nature ; and the net result of 

 these two sets of great and ever-present reactions — the 

 individual upon society and society upon the individual, 

 and both of these upon nature and nature upon them — 

 makes up the sum total of past history and includes the 

 whole of future advancement. 



These statements are so nearly self-evident that no one 

 probably will be inclined to question them. They are in- 

 troduced merely for the sake of fixing attention upon the 

 fact that the changes heretofore tv rought in the condition 

 of agriculture have been the work of man, and that any 

 future changes must be also made by him and subject to 

 his control ; not subject to his control as an individual, of 

 course, but as a community. And we must accordingly 

 inquire what are some of the great social forces which 

 have produced the results which every one now observes, 

 and to what extent they are likely to continue in operation. 



The most obvious and striking ftict in the social history 

 of recent times is the continuous and accelerated tendency 

 of population in every civilized country to gather in groups, 



