No. 4.] FARMING AS AN OCCUPATION. 331 



which should have cherished them, were making notable 

 history. The thought which is too prevalent to-day, that 

 the rural farmer, because of his isolation, cannot he in touch 

 with men of the world on all of the important questions of 

 the day, finds no confirmation in their lives. Think of a 

 town meeting of farmers in western Franklin, at a time when 

 it seemed as if all they could do was to eke out a miserable 

 existence, passing resolutions against the most powerful na- 

 tion in the world, and pledging their support to resistance, 

 even to death, to its arbitrary enactments ! I suspect we 

 would be inclined to ridicule such a meeting to-day as insig- 

 nificant and puerile ; but there is always significance and 

 strength in the actions of men when animated by the deter- 

 mination and high purpose of the farmers of Massachusetts 

 in the Kevolutionary period. 



Farming was the leading occupation in this State during 

 the first quarter of the present century; and in 1814, 

 Webster, in a debate in Congress upon the tarifi", said : < ' I 

 am not anxious to accelerate the approach of the period when 

 the great mass of American labor shall not find its employ- 

 ment in the field ; when the young men of the country shall 

 be obliged to shut their eyes upon external nature, upon the 

 heavens and the earth, and immerse themselves in close and 

 unwholesome workshops ; when they shall be obliged to shut 

 their ears to the bleating of their own flocks upon their own 

 hills, and to the voice of the lark that cheers them at the 

 plough, that they may open them in dust and smoke and 

 steam, to the perpetual whirl of spools and spindles and the 

 grating of rasps and saws. 



"Webster was soon to see the period of which he spoke. 

 For nearly two hundred years the farmer in a small way had 

 been a manufacturer as well. The clothing which he and his 

 family wore, and many of the utensils of the farm and house, 

 were home made ; but now there began to be dams thrown 

 across the small as well as the large streams, and in little 

 shops in every hamlet began that tide of manufacturing 

 which has built the many larire cities and towns in the Com- 

 monwealth, and drawn from the country much of its best 

 life. Then, too, the Western fields began to open, and 

 made large drafts of the sturdy men upon the old New Eng- 



