168 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



products in distant markets, and in the partial necessity of 

 making those sales in the form of raw products, thus giving 

 rise to an exhaustive type of farming. Compared with the 

 west, New England has far poorer soils, higher railway rates 

 per mile, has not the advantage that selling great masses of 

 products gives, uses far less machinery, has poorer pastures, 

 less skilled and aggressive breeders, less boldness of policy, 

 and is, as we believe, more fixed in its practices. We have 

 in the east the advantage of near-by markets, therefore 

 higher prices ; can produce better products, gain for them 

 personal markets, have cheaper money, cheaper lands, 

 better roads, more of permanent improvements, less expen- 

 sive habits, purer water, and conditions that admit and com- 

 pel closer industry, economy, and a keener exercise of 

 intellectual powers. Not all of these have been applied in 

 New England. 



The west absorbed our most adventuresome and ambitious 

 sons. The foundinir at home of new industries that modern 

 science has developed demanded more of these sons, while 

 both interests absorbed in inviting rates of interest the sur- 

 plus capital that has been accumulated and was being accumu- 

 lated by New England farmers. The older generation with 

 their practices were left to maintain what has- remained of 

 the vitality of New England farming. The immense demand 

 made upon New England farms has paralyzed its energies, 

 while the vim of the great west, built up by New England 

 blood and New England capital, poured in upon us by cheap 

 transportation its rivers of products upon the less ambitious 

 home stayers, who, to meet the new order of things, instead 

 of breasting the tide, narrowed and narrowed the farm opera- 

 tions, until relatively less capital and less labor were employed 

 upon them than in old times. If this policy was right once, 

 we believe something braver is desired now. To till only 

 eleven per cent of our arable land exclusive of pasture does 

 not do credit to our stalwart ancestry, who bravely cleared 

 our fields, erected our homes, established our improvements 

 and the ideal rural New England of the poet and the states- 

 man, and transmitted to the sons capital to continue them. 

 Like France and Enofland, we should till not less than one- 

 half the land capable of it. 



