AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



9 



PUI!LISHED BY JOSEPH BRECK & CO., NO, 52 NORTH MARKET STREET, (Agricoltubal Waeehouse.) 



VOIi. XVII.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH 13, 1830. 



[NO. 36. 



AGRICULTURAL. 



AN ADDRESS, 



Delivered at the Jliinual Cattle Shows of the ff^or- 

 cester and the Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin 

 A^icultural Societies, Massachusetts. October, 

 1838. By Henrt Colma.n', Commissioner for 

 the Agricultural Survey of the State. 



(Continued.) 



Agricultural labor is the basis and instrument of 

 ■wealth. The laboring man is the original pro- 

 ducer of all the wealth in the communiry, and in 

 the world. The almost creative power with which 

 God has endowed man, by vrliich he casts the seed 

 into the ground and by his fostering care matures 

 the harvest, is among the most wonderful attributes 

 jf his nature. Let the children ot luxury and 

 'ashion disdain, if so they choose, the huuible la- 

 Mrs of agriculture ; for all they enjoy and possess 

 .hey are first of all indebted to tiie agricultural 

 aborer ; and the very money in which they think 

 hey compensate him for his toil, and with which 

 le in his simplicity is so easily satisfied, until the 

 nodern invention of fictitious capital and of the 

 iDticipations of future resiilts in the form of bills 

 if credit, was only the representative of tlie accu- 

 iiulations of his own previous labor. All.thebiir- 

 lens of society are sustained, all its taxes arc paid, 

 11 its improvements are effected by agricultural 

 nd mechanical labor. The manufacturers, who 

 •repave the productj of the earth for the use and 

 onvenience of man, or construct implements an 1 

 lacliines by which man's toil is abridged, or his 

 apacities of production extended, must be con- 

 idered in the light of producers. The learned 

 irofessions seem to be made necessary only by the 

 ollies or imprudences, or wickedness of mankind. 

 Phe professors of the fine arts, the a.-tists, are the 

 fiere embellishments of the social edifice, beauti- 

 ul and charming when in their proper place. The 

 ntellectual teachers of the community, when they 

 lerform their high duties faithfully and philosoph- 

 cally, exalt the condition of man and multiply his 

 apacities for labor and enjoyment. Agriculture 

 nd llie meclianic arts are most largely indebted to 

 cience for their productiveness and utility. But 

 lone of these are producers in the proper sense of 

 hat term. AH the burdens and all the support of 

 he community fall upon labor. Nor do the accu- 

 aulations of the labor of other years in the form 

 f money ; nor the bestowment of permanent funds 

 or public uses.; nor the discovery of a gold or sil- 

 er mine ; nor pecuniary endowments for any be- 

 levolent or moral purpose in the form of vested 

 unds, in any respect abridge or alleviate labor, 

 'apital itself in any form, if brought into active use, 

 3 only a new demand upon labor. Capital itself, 

 et its accumulations be ever so great, of itself 

 Pill produce nothing. It is labor only that can 

 ender it productive, and that in truth pays all the 



When by a liberal endowment provision is made in 

 the form of permanent funds for the support of 

 some public institution, it is often said that nothing 

 farther will be needed ; but the intelligent observ- 

 er will perceive that these funds will produce noth- 

 ing of themselves farther than to stimulate pro- 

 duction ; and that, not by any intrinsic efficacy, but 

 by a mere political and conventional agency ; but 

 all production must come from labor ; and this too 

 from labor applied to the earth. Not unfrequently 

 we hear the passengers in a stage coach complain 

 of the slowness and refractoriness of the overload- 

 ed, jaded, and half-fed horses, and of their own 

 fatigues and sufferings even on a jaunt of pleasure. 

 In some cases, if it were practicable, it would be only 

 just that such persons should be put into the traces 



tural labor even in Massachusetts, boast as much 

 as we choose of the exuberant crops of the viro-in 

 West, or the reeking vegetation of Southern climes; 

 this I assert with confidence, that the returns of 

 agricultural labor even in Massachusetts, afford as 

 ample a compensation as a reasonable mind can 

 ask. This I could establish by irrefragable evi- 

 dence, did the time admit ; but it will be my prov- 

 ince to do it in another form. I will refer, how- 

 ever to two established facts. From the returns of 

 hundreds of as intelligent farmers as are to be 

 found in the state I have .iscertained the fact, that 

 charging labor at one dollar per day for a man, and 

 the same for a single team, in a six years course 

 of two manured crops and four unmanured, say for 

 example potatoes, corn, small grain and grasses. 



the horses?" Yes and whip them too. But will 

 they not remember, that the very feed by which 

 these horses are sustained, is the product of fields 

 which these same horses ploughed. The whippino- 

 is a pure gratuity ; and is to be received doubtless 

 with all due gratitude. Labor, physical labor is 

 the great instrument of all subsistence, of all wealth 

 and of many of our pleasures. Think of this, ye 

 children of luxury and fashion! When you re- 

 pose on your beds of down ; when you traverse 

 your magnificent halls with their soft carpets, their 

 festooned tapestry, their gilded cornices, their glit- 

 tering lamps ; when you set down to your over- 

 1.3aded boards, steaming with every luxury from 

 every clime ; when you challenge the passers by to 

 admire your pillared palaces ; your ornamented 

 grounds; your luxuriant gardens; and the ten 

 thousand appendages of beauty and taste, with 

 which you stand surrounded, remember thai all this 

 is the produce of labor ; daily, hourly, nightly toil ; 

 of the swinging of many, a tired and lacerated 

 muscle ; of the sweat of many a reeking and hao-- 

 gard brow. Happy if it be not an abused and un- 

 requited toil. Yours is in many cases only the la- 

 bor of enjoyment. 



I will not farther detain you with other illustra- 

 tions of the value and importance of labor, with 

 which every department of society is full. I do 

 not complain of labor as an evil. Through the 

 pride and insolence, through the avarice, or inhu- 

 manity, or recklessness of some who hold the pow- 

 er it may be made, it often is made, a dreadful evil. 

 But the necessity of physical and mental exertion 

 is a beneficent arrangement of divine providence ■ 

 and a situation involving no necessity of personal 

 exertion and. labor, neither physical nor mental, is 

 never a subject for envy. 



What then is the duty of an enlightened and 

 just community, towards labor ; agricultural, labor 

 in particular '. 



I do aol;' Jegin by asJting you to compensate it. 



This, a just and beneficent providence will take care 



of, if you do not interfere by your avarice or your 



injustice, to rob it of its proper wages. Say what 



acome which is supposed to be derived' from it, I '^e please of the unproductive returns of ao-rlcul- 



md the horses into the carriage. But, "have they not [ that after paying the interest upon the land at fifty 

 a right to complain if they will ? Do they not feed I dollars per acre, and taking only a fair average of 



crops under good cultivation, it gives a return of 

 fifteen to twenty per cent, per year. This, when 

 especially the greater security is taken into view, 

 and all the wasted capital and risks and losses on 

 the other are brought into the account, is as good 

 a return as has been gathered from any commercial 

 or manufacturing stock in the country, in the same 

 length of time, extraordinary circumstances always 

 excepted. 



The other fact to which I refer, none of you 

 will controvert. In my intercourse with the farm- 

 ers of Massachusetts, I can recall hundreds of in- 

 stances of competence and substantial independence 

 where tlie owners began life without a dollar, in 

 comparatively poor and inauspicious locations, and 

 by the labor of their own hands have supplied their 

 own wants, reared and well-educated numerous 

 families ^ and now, free from debt and with all the 

 ordinary co.mfnrts of life, are set down to enjoy the 

 calm evening of age, free from corroding cares, in 

 the grateful acknowledgment of that kind provi- 

 dence which has led them thus far on the journey, 

 in a sop''hing and cheering retrospect of the past, 

 and in h'.mble and animating hopes for the future. 

 Massachusetts is every where, even in what would 

 seem to be its most inhospitable localities, dotted 

 over v/ith these examples of rural comfort and in- 

 dependence. But pecuniary compensation is not 

 the only nor the best compensation with which a 

 wise and beneficent providence requites intelligent, 

 well directed, persevering, and honest labor. Health 

 of body and health of mind; calm repose at night ; 

 interesting and ever varying occupation ; the spur- 

 rings of hope ; the satisfactions of harvest ; the 

 exquisite pleasure of dispensing ; tbe consciousness 

 of honorable self dependence and useful exertion ; 

 the pleasure of eating bread raised by one's own 

 hand, and of wearing the products of your own 

 flocks; the exercise of a generous hospitality with- 

 out stint ; the freedom from anxious cares ; and the 

 charming and delightful conviction that in multiply- 

 ing the products of the earth, and in beautifying 

 and fertilizing the little spot which God permits 

 you to occupy, you are directly, constantly and ef- 

 fectually contributing to the public welfare, happi- 

 ness and improvement, and stimulating and forming 



