106 HAMPDEN SOCIETY. 



land indeed! Once a beautiful forest of tail maples, oaks 

 beeches, pines, chesnuts and hickory, furnishing ample evidence 

 of the rich and abundant resources of the soil, and beckoning 

 the honest axe-men of New England to come and share its 

 bounteous gifts, promising, and possessing the means of perform- 

 ing abundantly, rich harvests to them, and their children, and 

 their children's children, under the influence of fair and thor- 

 ough culture. 



How then is it, that all these resources are exhausted 7 that, 

 instead of a great harvest, we find a mere pittance 1 The sim- 

 ple truth is proclaimed, through your Committee, to-day, that 

 what has been may be, and shall be, if you will reclaim your 

 waste land. It directs you to break up your rocks, to clean 

 your hedges, put the rocks and small stones into a good wall, 

 bring up from your swamps and low grounds those rich depos- 

 its, which have been collecting from generation to generation, 

 waiting to serve you ; and prove yourselves good men and true, 

 by not withholding just wages from the laborer. For many 

 years, your farms (these lands) have filled your storehouses ; 

 and what have they received in return 7 Nothing ! compara- 

 tively nothing. 



The Committee have no fellowship with the too prevalent 

 opinion, that the farmer must add farm to farm, if he would 

 stand strong in dollars and cents. No doctrine is more preju- 

 dicial to agricultural interests. In this comity, it startles no one 

 to learn that many of our hill farmers possess four and five 

 hundred acres ; nor are they more surprised that the poor man 

 can hardly live at that. In the opinion of the Committee, every 

 acre the farmer possesses, which he cannot cultivate well, is a 

 curse to him and a trespass on the interests of the Common- 

 wealth. It encourages the silly idea of "going west" — drives 

 her citizens into other States — robs her of the benefit of their 

 labor and impoverishes her soil. 



T. K. D'WOLF, Chairman. 



