Convention—Conditions of progress. 
115 
new varieties secured from them, and the effects of shelter and 
moisture more thoroughly inquired into. The heat and dryness of 
our summers, followed by the extreme cold of our wunters, are for¬ 
midable obstacles to the cultivation of apples and pears. Our sum¬ 
mers are torrid, our winters frigid, and our fruit trees cannot bear 
both extremes. The dry heat deadens the sap vessels, and checks 
the circulation; the severe cold has the same effect, and when the 
spring opens, though there may be much life in the roots, the sap 
can not ascend freely to the upper branches; lower buds are pushed, 
and the top of the tree slowly perishes. Positions, cool and damp 
in summer, and sheltered in winter, may prove more favorable. 
At all events this is the nut, thick in the shell and thin in the meat, 
that nature now offers to our hand; only years of intelligent work 
will make it rich and toothsome. 
This brings us to our last position; there can not be much variety 
in our agricultural products without corresponding variety in all 
forms of labor, and entire harmony between its several parts. 
Mechanical industries, in their various branches, must be brought 
near to us and widely scattered among us, before we can greatly 
vary our produce and prepare to supply the secondary wants of the 
household. A large farming population cannot hold the manufac¬ 
tures of the world at arm’s length, without suffering an inability to 
raise bulky and perishable produce. These two things must be 
ready to grow up together. The farm must cheapen food, furnish 
it in variety, and so entertain hospitably the industries of the world; 
and these industries must, as they thicken population, call forth 
and repay the skill of the farmer. The world must come to our 
doors to be fed, and we must open our doors to feed it. Farmers, 
as one-half the social world, as furnishing food and raw material 
to the other half, and receiving from it the comforts, instruction, 
and elegancies of life, should be put in the closest and most harmo¬ 
nious ministration to mechanical, commercial and professional pur¬ 
suits. Separation is barbarism, intercourse is enlightenment. 
Everything, therefore, which tends to distrust and divisions, 
which makes the farmer jealous and exacting, which inclines him to 
meddle with legislation in his own behalf, is sure to issue ulti¬ 
mately in mischief. Farmers are the most permanent, the most 
immobile, and so the most defenseless element in the state; the 
ones least able to wage war, and the one sure to suffer the most 
