Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1872-09-20
THE FIELD OF IMPROVEMENT IN
AGRICULTURE.
Horace GreeIey's Address at the State
Fair.

when L, cnlid OF scarcely ten years. nrst |
crossed the Connecticut on the ice, in the
winter of 1S2O-2l, seeking opportunity to
earn my bread by helping to till the soil of
Vermont, this state contained some 100000 |
inhabitants, or 100000 less than her pres
ent number But the intervening halfcen- !
fury has witnessed signal multiplication |
and growth Of her cities and villages, her
quarrying and her manufactures, so that
those who live by agriculture in this state
are hardly more numerous and may even be
fewer, in 1872 than they wero in 1921.
The area of her cultivation is doubtless larg.
or and her annual harvests more bounteous,
while these command far better prices, in
1872 than in 1921; but very much work
formerly done in the field has been practi-
cally transferred to the workshop and the
factory; the moving machine and the horse
rake shortening as we'll tightening the hus-
bandman's toll in the meadows, but trobling
the cost Of the implements by means of which
he fills his barn-that is, transferring labor
from summer to winter-from the field to
the shop--from the quiet, slow-moviug, ru-
raj township to the bustling village. And
yet the fact remains that agriculture is not
advancing in this state--that, when compar-
ed with other industries, it seems to be retro
grading. Absolutely, its rewards are greater
than in my early boyhood relatively, they
are accounted far less OF the more intel
lectual capable, aspiring youth Of your state,
l apprehend that but small proportion
choose and follow the farmers vocation and
l Judge that this proportion is still diminish
ing. l cannot be mistaken in my assumption
that no more than moderate percentage of
the Vermont 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 propose 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 l
did not resist the constant, silent, irrepress-
BILE impulse which has led and is leading so
many of the sons and daughters cf Vermont
tc seek employment and homes elsewhere
than upon her soil. 1t was best neither for
them for our country, nor for mankind, that
all to whom this state has given birth should
have chung obstinately, persistently, like
Sarnacles, to the spot where they first began
to be. | have been widely misrepresentcd as
urging every one to "go West" when l give
such counsel only to those who cannot find
satisfactory work and adequate bread in the
Fast. If you have or can secure all you
need where you are, advise you not to " 90
West" nor go anywhere, but remain where
you are; for pioneer life is rugged and toll
some at BEST involving years Of prevalent
hardship and privation. 1t is 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 school-house, church. store, mills,
&C., within easy reach, to a rude cabin of
logs or rough boards located on bleak west
ern prairie, where everything seems to the
unfamiliar eye coarse, uncongenial repul-
sive. Time softens the harsh outline, reveal
ing beauties and advantages which replace,
in greater or less degree, those which were
relinquished by REMOVAL but when every
mitigation, every offset, has been fairly con-
sidered, the wrench given to the affections of
even the humblest New Highlander by migra-
ton to the West is a great and perilous
ordeal so that home sickness has killed many
loving wife and mother who bravely con-
sented, for her children's sake, to be torn up
by the roots and transplanted to Illinois or
Iowa, whose attractions, great as they are,
could never wean her from her fervent abb
sorbing love Of the green hills amid which
her childhood was craGled do believe in
going West; but cannot recommend it to
any who have passed the meridian Of their
days; and l deem its undeniabc priyations
more lightly regarded, more easily borne, by
young couples just setting out to traverse
arm-in-arm alike the howery and the thOrny
by-ways of life than by almost any others.
have not meant to deny that the last
halfcentury has witnessed progress in the
agriculture Of this state, and | do not cite
the fact that, whereas she formerly grew her
own broad-grain aud somewhat more, she
now buys the greater part of it, as dscred-
table. If she can make her bread cheaper
by grazing than by plowing-by selling wool
and butter than by growing wheat and rye
so be it. But when | recall to mind the in
terminabe procession of wagons laden with
the wheat of your northeastern counties that
used to pass on their way to market at Troy
or Albany, down the turnpike in Westhaven
beside which | was cutting brush and burn.
ing logs fifty years ago, and consider that the
very fields on which that wheat grew luxuri.
antly would now yield but half a crop, and
that precariously, halt, and ask whether
that can be good farming which disqualifcs
land for producing the very staff of life.
But the insect the weevi, nudge, OF
Ay-I hear it said, has stopped the growth
Of wheat in New England. | do not admit
the apology. regard the alleged cause OIL
failure as itself an effect of bad husbandry
l may not be ablc-nay, am mol able-tC
trace the evil to its ultimate source; but
find clue to that source in fact related tc
me from his personal observation by the late
Gov. William f. Packer, of Pennsylvania
Said he: al am familiar with the narrow
valley Of one of the petty tributaries of tn,
Susquehanna, up the middle ofwhich a high