222 AMERICAN FARMS. 



gree, furnish a history of social changes of very great 

 interest, especially as it relates to the rural classes. 

 If we look for a locality where the development of 

 industrial progress, with all the attendant social con- 

 sequences which industrial progress implies, should, in 

 its growth, correspond with the ideal of at least one 

 great 'school, and, in fact, in line with the general trend 

 of the economic thought of the day in America, we 

 instinctively turn to those old maritime States. Their 

 social history will, in relation to political economy, serve 

 to a great extent as an index to the whole question in 

 America. Is it satisfactory to any thoughtful mind ? 

 While it will be generally admitted that half a century 

 ago the average ruralist of New England was an enviable 

 type of citizen, that his social, financial, and political 

 influence was a power in his country, that he was ac- 

 knowledged on all sides to be a reliable, intelligent, and 

 weighty authority on all political, economic, and social 

 questions, and that his influence extended even to other 

 countries, few make this claim for him to-day. The 

 opinion that in character, ability, and enterprising spirit, 

 the farmer of New England is losing ground, is expressed 

 in the works of nearly every writer upon the condition 

 of the farmers of those States, 



One writer very pertinently remarks : " There was a 

 time when New England was looked upon as a sort 

 of reservoir of the true American spirit ; when she sent 

 her sons and her daughters out from the towns to be 

 teachers to the rest of the hation, and to found new 

 towns in the West ; when New England spirit seemed 

 to be a leaven, leavening all the national life. . . . All 

 this is changed." ' Certainly it is not in the farmers alone, 



' Mr. Geoffrey Chaplin, in the North American Review. 



