Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1872-09-30
MIR. GREELEY'S ADDRESS AT THE
VERMONT STATE FAIR.
THE FIELD OF IMPROVEMENT IN AG-
RICULTURE.

crossed the Connecticut ON ice, in the
winter of l82O-21, seeking opportunity
to earn my bread by helping to till the
soil of Vermont, this state contained
some 225,O0O inhabitants, or 100000
less than her present number. But the
intervening half-century has witnessed
signal multiplication and growth of
her cities and villages, her quarrying
and her manufactures, so that it is prob
able that those who live by agriculture
in this state are hardly more numerous,
and may even be fewer, in 1872 than
they were in 1921. The area of her
cultivation is doubtless larger and her
annual harvests more bounteous, while
these command far better prices, in 1872
than in 1921 but very much work for
merly done in the field has been practi-
cally transferred to the workshop and
the factory; the moving machine and
the horse-rake shortening as well as
Tightening the husbandman's toll in the
meadows, but trebling the cost of the
implements by means of which he fills
his barns-that is, transferring labor
from summer to winter-from the field
to the shop-from the quiet, slow-mov-
ing, rural township to the bustling vii
lage. And yet the fact remains that
agriculture is not advancing in this
state,-that when compared with other
industries, it seems retrograding. Alb
solutely, its rewards are greater than in
my early boyhood relatively, they are
accounted far less. Of the more intel
lectual, capable, aspiring youth of our
state, | apprehend that but small pro-
portion choose and follow the farmers
vocation and judge that this proper
tion is still diminishing. 1 cannot be
mistaken in my assumption that no more
than moderate percentage of the Yer
mont boys to-day foremost in school or
seminary are expecting and aspiring to
be farmers, even when agriculture is, or
was, their fathers vocation: and of this
minority, the larger number purpose to
pursue that calling elsewhere than upon
the hills or in the valleys of their native
state.
Far be it from me to deprecate, since
did not resist the constant, silent, ir
rerroooibic Impulse which has led and
is leading so many of the sons and darsh-
ters of Vermont to seek employment and
homes elsewhere than upon her soil. Il
was best neither for them, for their coun
try, nor for mankind, that all to whom
this state has given birth should hav,
clung obstinately, persistently, lik'
barnacles, to the spot where they frs
began to be. l have been widely mis-
represented as urging every one to "g
West" when [ give such counsel onl,
to those who cannot find satisfactor,
work and adequate bread in the East
If you have or can secure all you nee'
where you are, l advise you not to "g
West, nor 60 anywhere, but renal
where you are for pioneer life is rugge
and toilsome at best, involving years c
prevalent hardship and privation. ]
. is hard for men, it often proves too har
). for women, to find themselves suddenl
y transferred from snug, warm cot, COS
J. ly nestled among these hills, with th
school house, church, store, mills, &c
within easy reach, to a rude cabin (
logs or rough boards, located on blea
~ western prairie, where everything seen
to the unfamiliar eye coarse, ungenia
repulsive Time softens the harsh ou
g line, revealing beauties and advantag,
which replace, In greater or less degre
those which were relinquished by reno
20 al: but when every mitigation, evel
offset has been fairly considered tt
wrench given to the affections of eve
the humblest New Englander by MGR
tion to the West is great and perilo1
ordeal so that homesickness has kill,
many a wife and mother who brave
consented for her children's sake to
torn up by the roots and transplant
to Illinois or Iowa, whose attractio
great as they are, could never wean b
from her fervent, absorbing love of t
green hills amid which her childho
,rs was Graded. | do believe in goi
lG9p West; but | cannot recommend it
any who have passed the meridian
their days and l deem its undenia1
privations more lightly regarded, me
easily bourne, by young couples j
setting out to traverse arm-in-arm ali
the fowery and the thorny by-ways
life than by almost any others.
!; | have not meant to deny that
= last half-century has witnessed progr
, in the agriculture of this state; an
do not cite the fact that, whereas
formerly grew her own bread-grain ;
somewhat more, she now buys the gr
er portion of it, as 1iscreditable.
she can make her bread cheaper by {
ed zing than by plowing- selling v
and butter than by growing wheat
rye-so be it. But when ] call to n
who who the interminable procession of wae
laden with the wheat of your northw
ern counties that used to pass on t