Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-11-20
A Massachusetts, Editor on Vermont.

Une lfOnU Htht, W WHlCn lOu aspire.
A Massachusetts, Editor on Vermont.
Editor Cheever of the New England Far
mer, is so extremely popular among us here
in Vermont, and so warmly welcomed at all
our meetings, that it is no wonder he recip-
rocates the liking. His zeal for agricultural
progress, his skill and success as dairyman,
and the genial and common-sense style of
his writings, endear him to the wide circle
who know him as man and admire him
as an editor. In his account of his recent
visit to our state fair, he pays fine tribute
to Vermont and her farmers, from which
we make the following extracts
VERMONT FARMERS.
at is not that the Vermont farmers are natur-
ally better than other people, but the conditions
under which they have been reared have brought
out IA very different kind Of character from what
is seen in or around large cities or busy manufac-
turing villages. must say however, that take
the state Of Vermont as 1t is, do not believe her
superior can be found in the Union, when judged
by the highest standard of good, honest manhood
and womanhood. There is degree of human
fellowship, kindness and hospitalty--a feeling
that all are of one family and have common in
terest-and there is freedom from caste and ar
bitrary lines in society that can only exist where
a people are compelled from circumstances to
maintain degree of equality. Near my own
home in Massachusetts,, where almost every town
has one or more large manufacturing villages,
the farmer seems to find 1t difficult to learn his
true place in society. Apparently above him is
the large manufacturer whose profits, made from
the labors of several hundred employees, enable
him with his family to live in style not to be
thought of by the frugal, industrious farmer who
can only count the profits from a dozen dairy ami
mails Below him is the factory laborer who may
perhaps work fewer hours, but who has far less
to be thankful for, in the way of luxuries, than
the man who owns and cutivates good farm.
CITY INFLUENCES.
Between these three classes Of society," which
can be found in every manufacturing country
town. there is very little sympathy The bust
ness man finds himself in close relation to city
customs and city influences His house il large,
his servants numerous, his carriages fine, and
his sons and daughters are given the best educa-
ton that can be acquired from the best city
schools and colleges. In town meetings, the viii
layers generally vote solid for any improvements
recommended by the leading men of the village,
whether it be for fine town house, school house,
steam fire engine, or street sidewalk. The far
mer two or three miles away among the snow
banks, feels in winter, at least, as if he was left
a little out in the cold
FARMERS DISSATISFIED
"Under such circumstances, and especially dur
ing the past dozen years, while money in banks
has been supposed to be paying twice as much in
terest as farming property, there has naturally
grown up feeling of discomfort among nearly
all the farmers living within the influence of these
large manufacturing villages. 1t has been seen
ywhere--among the farmers boys who
loDged to be away to the city, where they could,
at all times, wear clean clothes and carry clean
hands; among the farmers daughters, who don't
propose to throw their lives away by marrying a
farmer; among the wives who are pleading for
the sale of the homestead and an investment in
savings banks or government bonds; in the brok-
ers' office where real estate is advertised; and it
is seen, too, in the walls of the country CORE
spondence of the agricultural press.
THE POSSIBILITIES OF COUNTRY LIFE.
"What most wish is that the dissatisfied, dis
contented people who occupy the thousands of
ordinary farms in the country towns Of New
England, and the other thousands who occupy
factory villages and swarm in our cities, could
fully realize the possibilities of country life and
country society, as exhibited in certain neghbor
hoods could point to in the state of Vermont. 1t
is not my purpose to flatter any class Of people
Vermont is what she is from natural causes Her
soil is rich and her water and air pure Her
people take to farming as naturally as ducks to
water. have no desire to buy a farm in Yer
month is not my home; but / am sure that had
| been born among her hills | should have con- |
sdered it one of my dearest privileges to die and
be buried among them. Vermont has furnished
men and women to help build up every newer
state in the Union, but they never forget the
home OF their youth. do not believe there is a
state in the Union so loved by its own people as
is Vermont by Vermonters, nor do believe there
is one lovely. Her people never to tire Of
speaking of the beauty of her hills and the love
illness of her natural scenery"
We have ourself lived in Massachusetts
long enough to fully realize those hard and
just lines that divide society there, to which
Mr.. Cheever refers. 1t is our indignation at
the creeping in of these traits of European
civilization which has warned us to the very
point of our pen against those principles, SO
destructive alike of Christianity and dem
ocracy, that are gaining so rapidly in the
older states, and giving rise to the antagon-
istic attitudes of the "higher and lower"
classes. Let us keep the thing out of Yer
mont as long as we can. And to do that we
must not only stand foot to foot for " God
and liberty" but we must be as warning
prophets to the rest of the land, and from
our Green Mountains proclaim the everlast-
ing gospels of love and freedom, necessarily
and strongly against the incoming tide OF
aristocracy and its attendant lawless in
fidelity