Page images
PDF
EPUB

with many farmers in all parts of the state, and unless those he met were more active, intelligent and progressive than the average, he deemed the picture too darkly drawn.

Mr. Hammatt could not agree with the report; he had known as lazy lawyers and men of other professions. He repudiated the idea that farmers could not have any of the luxuries of life without ruining themselves. Live, active, intelligent farmers in Maine, can secure for themselves and families the comforts and luxuries of life, as easily as any other class of men. What are their fine horses and carriages but luxuries, which few other professions can enjoy? Can the great body of mechanics do any such thing?

Lumbermen have to work night and day to get a living. Farmers can get a living with as little wear and tear as the merchant or any other class.

There is a growing interest in farming, and in all that pertains to agriculture. Our farmers are anxious to come in competition with others, and secure success above their fellows, and new attention is secured to this business all over the state, and I cannot think it is wise to report that farmers are inattentive or uninterested in their business; I hope the committee will modify their report.

Mr. Davis said that in the portions of the state with which he was acquainted, there was altogether a better feeling, and a higher estimate of farming and of the value of farms than formerly.

He could hardly assent to the report.

Dr. True thought the chairman had not taken exactly the right view of this matter. He might have said, with perfect truth, that the majority of farmers do not work over two hundred days in a year, and yet they live as well as any other class. Merchants have to work early and late to get a living, while farmers are at a show and spending, instead of earning money.

Mr. Flint thought if farmers sought only the substantial good of life, they could secure it with only so much labor as was necessary to health. There is no need of delving with that intensity which was needed in other employments. But when farmers undertook to go into the fancies, and luxuries, and follies of artificial life, they always found them a load they could not carry.

Mr. Hammatt could not agree with the gentleman from Somerset,

that farmers must deny themselves all the luxuries of life. That gentleman does not do this. He eats as good food, drinks as good water, rides as good a horse, drives as good a carriage as he pleases. Other farmers can do this if they choose, as well as he, and not over-work themselves either, by laboring no more than is compatible with health. I do not believe that it is necessary for farmers to deny themselves all luxuries to secure success. It rather requires zeal and energy and thought and persistency, to ensure the highest

success.

Mr. Cushman thought the term lazy could hardly be applied to farmers, merely because they did not work as many hours or as many days as men engaged in other professions and employments. There is no necessity for their doing this. They could carry on their business successfully without it.

Mr. Anderson defended his position. He thought no good could come of trying to cover up and smooth over the thing. The only way to remedy the evil and make progress, is to probe the sore to the bottom and ascertain its real nature, then a successful remedy could be applied. It is useless to deny that there is a want of faith in their profession on the part of farmers. We may as well tell the whole truth, for it cannot be concealed that farmers do not enter into their business with that zeal and real energy we see in other professions. They do not toil with the persistency that marks the successful merchant and artizan, nor do they invest capital when they have it, with that freeness and confidence which is shown in other sorts of business. When farmers come to have faith in their business, work every day in it as do men engaged in other occupations, apply capital in its prosecution, study the best method of using labor, capital and manure, and pursue it with the same energy and zeal, the march of improvement will go forward with a speed not yet attained.

One other thing is also needful; they should have more self respect as it is, they think too little of themselves. They often act as if they were inferior to others. If men as individuals or classes would be respected, they must first respect themselves.

Mr. Hammond approved of the report. He understood it to say that farmers must confine their attention to their farming; not divide.

it with other employments, but give to it both their undivided energies and their capital, and that until this was done, the highest success could not be secured. In this view he most fully coincided.

Mr. Porter agreed with the report. It is true that many of our farmers are not so industrious, energetic and persevering as they ought to be, and both themselves and their farms bear the mark of their shiftlessness, as plainly as Cain bore his mark. It is useless to think that farmers can succeed in their business, any more than others, without intelligence, energy and enterprise. What is most wanted among our farmers to bring them up to the mark, and wipe out the mark of inferiority, is faith, force, energy and activity.

After some further remarks the report was adopted.

Mr. Wasson, for committee on fourth Topic, made a report in which the great necessity of a geological survey of the state was fully admitted and its importance forcibly set forth, but concluded with the recommendation that the Board do not urge it at this time, believing that in the present low condition of the finances of the state, the attempt would be futile and perhaps prejudice future action. The report was accepted and laid on the table.

The next day Mr. Anderson moved a reconsideration of the vote whereby it was accepted, and that it be recommitted with instructions. He said it was made the explicit duty of this Board, by the act establishing the same, to investigate all subjects pertaining to agriculture, and to make such recommendations and suggestions as its interests required.

Mr. Flint was in favor of the survey, but was afraid that those who do not see the necessity of it might be prejudiced against the Board, and therefore thought it not best to urge it at present.

Mr. Wasson prized a geological and agricultural survey as much as any one could. He admitted that the demand came from every part of the state. But any effort to obtain it now, is futile. Ever since 1834, attempts had been made, and yet little had been done. Such is the low condition of the finances of the state, that although we ought to have the survey, we know in all probability what the answer will be, and therefore we ought not to ask it.

Mr. Hammatt took a different view. It is our duty to recommend to the legislature what we fully believe will conduce to the highest agricultural welfare in the state. It is the province of the legisla

ture in deciding upon the expediency of adopting what we recommend, to consider the condition of the treasury.

Dr. True remarked, that the topic under consideration involves principles that are difficult to discuss so as to convince the unconvinced. It is difficult to point out specifically the benefits that would arise from a geological survey of the state. Public sentiment has, for many years, felt that it should be done; but various causes have

served to prevent its completion.

Massachusetts, New York, and other states have adopted the policy of developing their natural resources, and are now reaping an abundant harvest. New York alone has expended well nigh half a million of dollars to complete the survey of her territory; in this respect, perhaps, she as a state, stands foremost in the world.

There are many unsettled questions which geologists have referred to a complete survey of Maine for a solution. Every river from the St. Croix to the Piscataqua needs to have its history recorded. Its soils, its muck beds, its marine manures, its rocks, its minerals, its fossils, its mines, its quarries of slate and lime and marble, its forest lands, all need the scrutinizing eye of the mineralogist, the chemist, and the geologist. The quarries of marble and slate which are so valuable to Vermont, on recent investigation are found to extend over into northern Maine, Not a foot of soil on our territory is unworthy the investigation of the man of science.

Then there is a negative influence which is of no little value. The excitable and visionary man is deterred from carrying out schemes which he has laid, in violation of the well known laws of nature. Men will not be left to hunt for gold where there is none. Some secret nook in yonder mountain will no longer be reported as the place where a mass of gold or silver was found but never made known. Pyrites will not be mistaken for the precious metal, nor tourmaline for coal. Men will not then dig into solid granite for coal, because the geologist tells them better.

I have no doubt the labors of the Board of Agriculture, and especially the survey of our secretary in Aroostook in 1857, saved to the state last year a million of dollars worth of men and capital. It might cost five thousand dollars to continue the geological survey of the state, but I believe that for every one thousand dollars expended in this way, there will be a saving of one million of dollars,

in men and capital. Nor is this a mere matter of belief. It can be demonstrated by the safest rules of sound political economy which time will not allow here to present.

I am aware, that retrenchment is the order of the day, and I would go for that as heartily as any other man, but as one would arrest the falling of his whole house by setting beneath it a single prop, so may we, by a little attention to the wants of our body politic, place it on a firmer and broader basis than ever before It is for the interest of the whole state that it should be done. He had no doubt that an appropriation could be obtained, men's views have changed on this subject, and those who a few years ago opposed it, now advocate it.

The secretary here stated that in 1855, a resolve passed the legislature authorizing a continuation of the survey, but it filed because of a requirement incorporated into the resolve, that at least two specimens of soil in each town should be analysed; a requirement at once useless and fatal. The cost of so many analyses would be greater than the appropriation, and had this not been required analyses would, as a matter of course, have been made in all cases where they appeared necessary.

Mr. Bailey dissented from the conclusions of the report. He thought we ought to urge this measure, and now. The declarations of the report as to the necessity of the survey demanded that it should be forthwith done. Nothing else is of so much consequence to agriculture. The state now does not produce one-tenth of what might be raised. Suppose it costs ten thousand dollars to make the survey, what is that, if by expending it we can produce a hundred times as much? It is wasteful to delay it longer. It would be the most profitable investment that could be made, and this Board owes it to the interest it represents, to ask of the legislature an appropriation to make the survey.

After some further discussion the report was recommitted, and subsequently reported and adopted, as follows:

The committee to whom was recommitted with instructions, the following topic:-Is it advisable to recommend a completion of the geological and agricultural survey, report:

That in this "age of progress," few can doubt that the actual state of the country with its available resources, the origin and

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »