No. 4.] XEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE. 105 



army, we find a progressive forward movemont, we know 

 that all the members necessarily share in that movement, 

 some in advance, some in the rear, but all going steadily 

 onward. Such a movement, as has been already clearly 

 shown, has been going on in New England, not merely for 

 fifty years but from the days when the first settlers, plant- 

 ing the first hills of corn, in the manner imitated from the 

 Indians, placed two little fish in each hill, because, as the 

 natives said, corn had ])een raised thereabout again and 

 again, and the land was now hungry. The hum of New 

 England industry has been heard around the world, and 

 the light of her intelligence has everywhere shone. No 

 people have ever exhiliited greater skill in making use of 

 the resources at their command, in creating and utilizing 

 new conditions, and in making each advance a stepping- 

 stone for further progress. The establishment of new 

 industries and the extension of old ones has been a conse- 

 quence, not of failure, but of success in other employments. 

 The fact that farmers and the sons of farmers have sought 

 the city, that agricultural labor has been transmuted into 

 commercial and manufacturing energy, is simply an evi- 

 dence that shrewd men, of a shrewd race, have more 

 and more discovered the field in which their forces could 

 be most profitably employed. The discoveries of science, 

 the diversification of industries, the division of labor, the 

 gathering of population in large groups, are all but parts of 

 the same great transition by which the world is passing over 

 from medipevalism to the energy, the activity, the forward 

 and upward push of modern life. 



In this transition movement New England has been not 

 only among the sharers but among the leaders. These 

 States now find themselves with a large and increasing 

 industrial population, side by side with a relatively small 

 and diminishing agricultural population. The question for 

 the present, as well as for the future, is, what relation these 

 two great bodies of workers are to bear to each other. It 

 cannot for a moment be supposed that the energy and skill, 

 and foresight and steadiness of purpose, which have created 

 the situation, will prove incompetent to deal wisely with it. 

 These busy hives of industry furnish the best market in the 



