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THU JLIJlfOIS FABMiaL 



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yer, or a sprig of a merchant's clerk, took a 

 fancy to his daughter, and would rather his 

 son should I«am to turn broomstocks or 

 make shell combs from oxen's horns, than to 

 be a farmer. 



Now the times are better. If the farmer 

 ean grow something, he has a reasonable 

 prospect of selling it at a living profit. But 

 the depressing influences of such a state of 

 things as the farmers of this country have 

 been through, do not cease in a day or a 

 year. They run through generations. 



Out of this non-manufacturing system, 

 this dependence on a foreign power for 

 nearly all that was worn by day, or slept 

 in by night, articles without which we could 

 not be born comfortably or buried decently, 

 or work the soil while we lived, grew among 

 other foolish ideas, this most foolish of all, 

 that the farmer alone has little need of edu- 

 cation. We mean that this ridiculous idea 

 grew out of that state of things, as an 

 American idea. It was old in Europe three 

 centuries ago. ...Kra 



It may be nearer the truth to say that it 

 was imported; but it became acclimated, 

 confirmed, made, we sometimes (ear, as im- 

 movable as the everlpting hills, by that 

 very state of things wnich we have describ- 

 ed, a dependence on England for our swad- 

 dling clothes, and grave clothes, and all the 

 clothes we vroar between, wedding suits and 

 all, forour pots, axes, dish-kettles, and log 

 chains, everything we wore or used, and 

 consequently no home market for our pro- 

 duce, twenty pounds of veal for the writing 

 of a dunning letter at us, and then no money 

 for the veal, but a yard of Indian cotton, 

 that the wind might not blow upon too 

 rudely, and that the lawyer would by no 

 "manner of means" accept as pay for a 

 three-line dunning letter. Those who op- 

 pose American manufactures would re-inau- 

 gurate precisely such a condition for the 

 farmer; would leave him to the sorry chance 

 of raising a great deal and getting precious 

 little for it. All the commerce in the world 

 would not save him. It would only filch 

 away the little money he could get, and put 



it quite beyond his reach, concentrating a 

 large share of it in our own commercial 

 centers, and dividing the rest between the 

 foreign merchant, the foreign farmer, and 

 the foreign mechanic, instead of leaving it 

 here to go the rounds, from the farmer to 

 the manufacturer, from the manufacturer to 

 the laborer, from the laborer back to the 

 farmer, through everybody's hands, baying 

 what everybody wants. 



It is nothing but the supplying of our own 

 wants, and, as fast as possible, oar own lax- 

 uries, by home industry, that can keep this 

 latter state of things in operation. Nothing 

 else will save us from being cheated as 

 badly as our fathers, when they bought their 

 door locks of England, and as we are when 

 we buy a certain class of razors that sell 

 here for a dollar, and there for a shilling, or 

 another class, that shave when we buy them, 

 but won't shave afterwards: It is true that 

 foreign immigration, and oui exportation of 

 farm produce, great in itself, but destined 

 for ever to be small compared with the 

 amount we ciaji grow, might a little retard 

 the return of times when the results of the 

 farmer's labor would go a begging. But it 

 should be considered, that a failure to mui- 

 ufacture for ourselves would stop immigra- 

 tion, while it would stimulate foreign agri- 

 culture, and would soon leave the American 

 farmer without a buyer. 



While the old order of things lasted, 

 while we imported all our manufactured 

 goods, instead of importing only as now too 

 large a portion of them, while the fanner 

 got almost nothing for his produce, and that 

 not in cash, but in slazy cotton cloth, or in 

 pot-metal nails, or pewter tankards, or pew- 

 ter gimlets, what wonder that the idea of a 

 young man's wanting no education to be a 

 farmer took possession of the public mind? 

 Alas! if educated, he might be spoiled for 

 his condition. If one of his brothers was 

 dull, educate him for a minister. If another 

 was trickish, make a lawyer of him. The 

 one that was to b&a farmer, was bom to the 

 trade, and that was enough. Let him stay 

 at home, work hard, and help his brothers 

 into a better position, one from which they 



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