Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1872-09-19

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raj Fair IF Fe1mont, st. Johns5ury
Sept. 10, 1872, By Horace Greeley.
When /, a child of scarcely ten years,
first crossed the Connecticut on the ice,
in the winter of 1S20-21, seeking Oppor-
tunity to earn my bread by helping to
till the soil Of Vermont, this State con-
tanned some 225, 900 inhabitants, or 100,-
900 less than her present number. But
the intervening half century has wit
messed ignalmultiplication and growth
of her cities and villages, her quarrying
and her manufactures, so that it is prob
able that those who live gby agriculture
in this State are hardly more numerous,
and NAV even be fewer, in 1872 than
they were in 1921. The area of her cul-
tivation is doubtless larger and her an
nual 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 practic-
ally transferred to the workshop and the
factory the moving machine and the
horse-rake shortening as well as tighten
ing the husbandmans toll in his 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 work
shop-from the quiet, slow moving, ru-
raj township to the busting village. And
vet the fact remains that agriculture is
not advancing in this State-that, when
compared with other industries it seems
to be retrograding. Absolutely, its re-
wards are greater than in my early boy
hood relatively, they are accounted
far less. OF the more intellectual, cap
able, aspiring youth of your State, | APP
prehend that but small proportion
choose and follow the farmers vocation,
and / Judge that this proportion is still
diminishing. | cannot be mistaken in
my assumption that no more than a
moderate per centage of the Vermont
boys to-day foremost in school or semin-
airy 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-
repressible impulse which has led and is
leading so many of the sons and daugh-
tiers of Vermont to seek employment and
homes elsewhere than upon her soil. 1t
was best neither for them, for our coun-
try, nor for mankind, that all to whom
this State has given birth should have
chung obstinately. persistently, like bar
nacles, to the spot where they first be
gan TO be ! hGre been widely miSrep-
resented rs urging every one to go
West, when ! givesuc counsel only TO
those who cannot find satisfactory work
and adequate bread III the East If you
have or can secure all yOu need where
you are, | advise you not to ego West, "
nor go anywhere, but to remain where
you are for pioneer life is rugged and
toilsome at best, involving years of prey
alent hardship and privation. tits hard
for men, it often proves too hard for
women, to find themselves suddenly
transferred from snug. warm cot
costly nestled among these hills, with the
schoolhouse, church, store, mills, ETC.,
within easy reach, to rude cabin of
logs or rough boards, located ON a bleak
Western prairie, where everything seems
to the unfamiliar eye coarse, ungenial,
repulsive. Time softens the harsh out
lines, revealing beauties and advantages
which replace, in greater or less degree,
those which Were relinquished by re-
moval but, when every mitigation,
every offset, has been tairly considered,