224 AMERICAN FARMS. 



It is, notwithstanding, a great mistake that the farmers 

 of New England do not compare well with the average 

 citizen in all that goes to make up the invaluable portion 

 of the commonwealth. Especially is this the case, as we 

 look at the matter from the standpoints of morality, re- 

 ligion, or social order. Social safety is with the citizen 

 who possesses a desire to preserve his country's institu- 

 tions and her political integrity. The farmers, sprung 

 from the loins of the stock which shaped their country's 

 early life, must, of all, be her truest patriots ; whereas 

 the ignorant, shifting, migrating classes, of which the 

 American cities are becoming largely composed, have 

 cast off their patriotic sentiments, if they ever had any. 

 In them is danger, now and always. Forty-seven per 

 cent, of the population of the cities and factory towns 

 of Massachusetts in 1885 were foreign-born ; while 



civil war. The only important point in the catastrophe, which Judge 

 Nott does not attempt to explain, or even to touch upon, is the 

 equanimity, and even rejoicing, with which the New England 

 farmers have witnessed the disappearance of the social edifice which 

 they had passed two centuries in building up, and cementing with an 

 enormous amount of religious zeal and self-sacrifice. For more than 

 a quarter of a century New Englanders have, through their organs, 

 in politics, in literature, and oratory, eagerly supported the policy 

 which was visibly and rapidly changing the character of their popula- 

 tion and the structure of their society. The most ardent advocates 

 and promoters of ' the factory at your doors,' ^^'ith its swarm of 

 foreign-born voters, have been New England men. They have seen 

 it rapidly and surely converting Connecticut and Massachusetts into 

 foreign, and even into Catholic States, ousting the natives of the 

 Puritan stock from all real influence in the government, and consign- 

 ing to the lumber-room of history the old Puritan traditions of public 

 spirit and public duty, and have seen it sending all their boys and 

 girls flying into the cities and to the West, without a protest or even 

 a word of complaint." December 5, 1889. 



