6 



large tracts of farming lands for a speculation and not to 

 farm — bear with me as I hasten to my subject. Of course I 

 fully appreciate that these and many other reasons for the 

 application of labor to land may be very excellent, and yet not 

 come within my scope. I wish you only to assume with me 

 that we have a farmer who makes farming his business, and 

 who, having a certain capital to invest, selects land within 

 ten miles of the City Hall, to farm, with a view solely to get 

 from the land and his capital and labor the usual return 

 earned by an equal capital and like industry in other invest- 

 ments in this vicinity. How can he manage it ? What new 

 elements have made this problem a substantially new one 

 since this society was founded .'' 



Twenty-five years ago Boston, as many of us gentlemen 

 can very well remember, was a thriving little city, lying snug 

 in a small and compact territory and surrounded on the side 

 of Norfolk at least by tracts of sparsely inhabited land, which 

 were in great part occupied by regular old-fashioned farms. 

 Even Roxbury in those days might almost have been called 

 an agricultural region. For ten years later the larger part of 

 Dorchester was actually farming land. Within ten years 

 West Roxbury rejoiced in one hundred and eight ( io8 ) 

 farms, which embraced seven thousand acres of her charming 

 territory. These places, to be sure, are now the city ; but it 

 is not that alone which has cooled their agricultural ardor. 

 They ceased to be agricultural not so much because they 

 were devoured, as because they were transfigured. Of course 

 I speak generally. Market gardening, floriculture, horticul- 

 ture, and some milk-farming doubtless still survive, and pos- 

 sibly a general farm or two in some remoter district ; but I 

 fancy that farming as a profitable pursuit is pretty well 

 finished in most of that region. So it is, I suppose, in our 

 faithful Brookline, which still holds fast to her old county 

 friends. For a multitude of people, whose business confined 

 them from morning till night in the city, found it both pleasant 

 and economical to have homes in the country. They worked 

 all day in the noise of Boston streets, but they were glad at 



