New England's agriculture has been denounced repeatedly as backward and a failure, and some of the critics have been decidedly caustic and pessimistic In their outspokenness. One writer (l )• stated:
"New England's agriculture is a thing apart from Heir England. That group of states re ante the ultimate in industrial supremacy; broadly visualised, the agriculture therein stands for all that is retrogressive.
•Once the agricultural colossus of the nation, New England farming today is the Inspiration of gloom. For more than half a century the product has declined. The rural population, unable to endure, has migrated to the cities or to the fields of the west, leaving a serried rear-guard to keep up the fight. New England's Colonial and Revolutionary history and her wealth of manufacturing industry must be her boast. Her agriculture is a broken reed. *
Elsewhere (3) he continued:
Outside the boundaries of Hew England, the belief prevails that these states are composed of series of abandoned farms with cultivated areas thrown in to break the monotony; that anybody can go in there and pick up a farm for a little more than a song.
He interviewed the secretary of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture who denied that such charges applied to his state; but official assurances from Washington Informed him that the state had some 300,000 acres of cut-over land and many neglected farms. Very frequently there appear in print statements to the effect that crops once raised extensively are seldom grown now in New England and yields are shrinking; that farm animal and their products are diminishing in number and amount; that farm products generally are inferior in quality and smaller in quantity than they should be; that the agricultural industry is becoming steadily less capable of sustaining Hew England's population; that rural population is declining in what were once prosperous agricultural sections; that the numbers of farmers and of farms are dwindling and that farm property is lessening in value.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:theses-2382 |
| Date | 01 January 1921 |
| Creators | Folsom, Josiah C. |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 |
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