The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1878-03-22

udii w tNcnl. CVWos YOU WdllI 10 Keep
twice that number. You must go where
you can get more land. will answer
this argument by advising you to dou-
bic the producing power of the land you
have. This am quite sure is practical
bic at fur less cost than the expense and
sacrifice of emigration to new coun-
try. Aud this, apprchend, is the very
important lesson that Vermont must
learn, in order to check the depicting
process which for forty years past has
been robbing the state of the best of the
population. Even Vermont, old as she
is, is in the A, b, c of soil improve
ment. If your hills could be given into
the hands of Scottish Higllanders, the
yeomanry of Ireland, England or Ger
many, and subjected to the modes OF
cultivation there practiccd, more than
two blades of grass would soon be made
to grow where you now get but one.
This is done mainly by work-and the
work necessary to the opening and i'm
proving of new farm in new coun-
try, would double the producing capac-
ity of your land here.
"Your agricultural councils are move
ments In the right direction. BY max
Ing the wisdom of one the wisdom of
all, and tho wisdom of all the wisdom
of each, you will soon learn the secret
OF making your lands so productive that
no farmer will need to increase his acres
in order to the increase of his income.
81 emigrated from Vermont moro
than thirty years ago. l lived in Him
ois when unbroken, unoccupied prairies
lay for hundreds of miles around me Of
tering the most flattering inducements
to eastern emigrants. They came and
occupied those lands. Some were sue
cessful; many were unsuccessful. The
proportion of unsuccessful farmers was
quite as great in Illinois as in Vermont.
Want of success drove them farther
west, to newer frontier settlements,
from which again to recede as civiliza-
tons overtakes them.
"Men who are successful farmers In
Vermont will succeed anywhere. Men
unsuccessful here, by reason of short
coming in Judgment, in business capac-
ity and good management, will for the
same reason fail in the west. I know
men OH the Pacific coast who have been
elnigrating all their lves-living first in
New England or New York, then In
Michigan, then in Wisconsin or Illinois,
then in Iowa or Kansas, then in Califor-
MIA or Oregon, then in Washington Ter
ritory. Unsuccessful men always, and
always living hard, uphill life. Sue
cessful men are not doing well where
they are, and 1t is a safe rule to let well
enough alone Unsuccessful men are
not apt to attain success by emigration.
They kept themselves impoverished by
continual moving, and make good the
proverb that the rolling stone gathers
no moss II is better to be content
and if they cannot grow rich, they can
at least give to their families the bene-
fits of civilization, ofwhich they deprive
them by emigration.
81 have lived long in the west. l
have seen enacted the history of a null
titude OF families, broken up, unsettled,
unsuccessful, unhappy. Glad would be
many a discouraged wife and heart
broken mother, in land of strangers.
without home and without sympathiz-
ing friends, if she could be returned to
the land of her nativity, and enjoy the
sympathies and kind offices of the
friends Of her childhood-even though
her lot was in poverty, and she obliged
TO toll for daily food Emigration won't
cure the mistortuncs of the unfortunate.
Economy, thrift, enterprise, are as es-
scntial to success i'll the west as in the
east. Extravaganza, Incidence and in
attention are followed by the same re-
suits there as here.
western emigration societies, rail-
road corporations and individual citi-
zcns, who are exerting all possible in
fluence TO induce emigration, would, of
course, pronounce me recreant to nv
duty as citizen of Washington Terri
tory in saving word to dissuade the
people of New England from deserving
their native country and going west In
pursuit of better home.
al tell You seriously that a Vermont
farmer, with good living; good,
well-appointed home; with stock, tools,
buildings, timber, good water and good
social surroundings, runs great risk
when he undertakes to better his con-
dition by pulling up stakes and begin
ming again In Il new country. And ]
have made il the rule of my life, espe-
cially since | won't to tho Pacific coast,
to respond to all appeals from eastern
people who have asked my advice, in
the same spirit. Ny uniform answer
has been: Let well enough alone. If
you have all even chance where YOU are,
you run risk by exchanging n certain
for an uncertainty
vermont, as a state, has great in
tercst in the matter of emigration. This
depicting process has been going OH in
this state for the last forty years, and
while sho has shown most wonderful
tenacity oflife-maintaining nobly her
social institutions, and indicating the
prestige of her civilization-ye who can
say what Vermont would have been in
population, wealth and power, if all her
people had stayed at home, and had
put the money and energies which they
have expended in other states into the
business and institutions of their native
state?
"The saying was ascribed to Stephen
A. Douglas that Vermont is good
state to be born in; and good state to
go away from 1t Is also an old adage
that. THE proof of pudding is in the
tasting Having been born here my
self, l am a competent witness to the
first part of the statement; having
gone away, and like the prodigal return
ed to sojOurn for time among the
friends Of my youth and the scenes OF
my childhood, | will modify the last
part Of the statement by saying that
Vermont is a good state TO come back
to-"
Prof. Collier was called out in some
very complimentary remarks bv the
president. Prof. Collier said he had
been charged otherwise, but the re-
marks of the president had acquitted
him, and should the present board fail
of its duty, if one power and another
should array against il and so cripple its
usefulness. no power could stop It; it is
demanded by the people and must con-
tinue. This material industry, sub
served by the labors of the board, I'M
derlies tho interests of education, the in
terest of religion.
With the mortgage on the farm, there
was no use talk of aesthetics, the time
would come where such things would
be. They were now longed for, and