EXHIBITION OF 1880.

OPENING ADDRESS.

BY HON. N. D. FRATT, PRESIDENT.

Fellow Members of the State Agricultural Society; Ladies and Gentlemen: It is my pleasant duty to say a few words of welcome to you on this occasion of our twenty-seventh annual gathering. I welcome you as a part of the great army of agricultural progress. I welcome you as the most enterprising, active and intelligent members of the oldest, and probably the most useful and necessary profession on the face of the earth. We are working men; men who work not alone with hands, but with brains also. Both are alike essential in upholding that most ancient and honorable profession, which existed long before the gentle. man came into fashion

"When Adam digged and Eve span,

Pray where then was the gentleman ?"

Bear in mind, I speak of the conventional gentleman, who is like the lilies of the Field in this, "that he toils not, neither does he spin." He is above laboring, either with mind or hands, and he lives, the drone in the hive, upon the toil and enterprise of his fellows. For we know that labor is consistent with the truest gentility, and that in the development of the ideally perfect farmer, the noblest powers of manhood must have place and find their proper sphere of action. I congratulate you upon this grand exhibition. It is in most departments superior to all that have preceded it. The display in horses, cattle, sheep, swine and poultry is fully equal, while the agricultural, horticultural, manufacturers' and fine art departments are unusually good; and last of all, and perhaps greater than any, is the department of machinery, which can only be estimated by the number of acres covered, showing that the active brain of the inventor has not

been idle. This ought to be to us a joyful occasion. We should come, thankful that the greater part of our labors for the year are ended; the greater part of our gains are secured; and we should come, thankful to the giver of all good things that we have received at His hands such a measure of prosperity during the year. And as we look upon our friends anew, each man is to us a reminder of his specialty, and we should cheerfully greet each other, inquire after his well doing, and rejoice in his success.

It is not necessary at this time to say much concerning the benefits of these fairs. But it is hardly too much to say that, as the intelligent men I see around me are the cause of these annual fairs, so the fairs in their turn are the creators of that enterprising, wide-awake, discriminating spirit which is the ground and sure promise of success in agriculture. Here we see the best that can be shown from all parts of our magnificent state, of everything connected with agriculture. Here we have an opportunity of seeing all improvements in farming implements, of comparing one. with another, of talking over their merits with those who have used them, and may attain the best understanding relative to their value. This subject, however, has been so thoroughly considered in addresses on former occasions, that it is only necessary to refer to it at this time, without wearying you with a repetition of that which is so obvious.

In reviewing the farming conditions of the current year, it may appear that in some respects we may not be so favorably situated as regards the crops as we were last year, yet we have abundant reason for congratulation in the general prosperity. Local storms have affected unfavorably our returns in some sections. But the reports are generally favorable, and the prospect is, that crops throughout the state will compare very well with the averages of former years. Scarcity will prevail nowhere, but as is usual in our favored land, we have an "abundance and to spare." Herein will be found the chief difference between our own and other lands. We cannot realize the vastness of our country; we cannot raise up our minds to such a plane that we can properly conceive its extent, its wonderful natural fertility, and the great variety of its products.

In Europe the failure of one interest brings distress upon all. Here, failure in one part of the country is scarcely felt in another, and it may be safely said that considering all parts of this immense. country with its great variety of climate and productions, that there is always abundance; partial failure here or there is more than made up by the surplus in other parts, which the railroads bring to our very doors. Although in some sections winter wheat may have winter killed, it is in other parts well filled and a good crop. Spring wheat is probably about an average crop; the prospect for a large yield of corn is excellent; oats are generally below the average.

Dairy products have brought unusually good prices; cheese especially has brought better prices than last year. Looking at the crops, considering the prices of farm products as a whole, appreciating the revival of business in all departments of industry around us, surely the farmer has no reason for discouragement. Individual cases of failure and hardship there will always be; but we have only to look around and we must see that as a class, we are greatly favored by a steady and sure though gradual growth in material prosperity, and in all the comforts and refinements of life which naturally follow such prosperity.

As we consider agricultural conditions during the year, and naturally take pride in our success, and rejoice in our prospects, let us carefully observe and reflect concerning the improvement of these conditions, and learn how they may be modified to meet the changes which constantly occur in the ever shifting and varying demand of the world around us. Let us not be passively carried along in the stream of life, but be ever wide awake and active in meeting those demands, and in seizing every opportunity to supply the market just what it needs, and just when it is needed. Our experience should not, "like the stern lights of a ship illuminate only the track passed over," but cast its rays ahead and disclose the successes and profits of the future.

What are the conditions which are changing? I shall briefly consider in their order some of these:

The first changing condition I shall notice is the ever increas ing facility and cheapness of transportation for our productions,

and consequent on this ease and cheapness of transportation, follows the increased money value of all our productions; by bring. ing close to us the great multitude of consumers in the eastern states, and in Europe,-and here permit me to acknowledge our obligations to the railroads. Time will not permit, and my ability would fail if I should attempt to set before you the advantages, direct and indirect which accrue to the farming community from the railroads. It is within the memory of many of us that the country might be filled with wealth, and the farmer who produced it, for the want of a market, might not be able to decently clothe his children, barefooted boys and poorly clad girls, and to give them an education was an ambition rarely realized. Who of us of middle age does not remember the time when in this favored country, the farmer hauled his pink-eyed wheat from forty to one hundred miles to the nearest market? Spending from four to ten days on the melancholy trip, receiving his thirty-five to fifty cents per bushel, and after paying his hotel bills and getting a few absolute necessaries, would hardly have enough money left to pay his way home, this is not over stated. Who does not remember the long weary miles of mud, the loads of green lumber hauled home, the rains of fall and spring, and the biting blasts of winter? So much toil, so much exposure and so little gain. The most of these are things of the past, the markets

of the world are now almost at our doors.

Let us rejoice in the changed condition of things. Let us be thankful for the energy and capital which have spread the roads, and built the trains, and created the power to take our produce to its destination, when without such aid it could hardly be taken at all; which have doubled the value of our produce and trebled the value of our lands, brought the luxuries of the world to our homes, and by annihilating the space and time which separated the nations of the world, showed us our mutual dependence, and made us realize, if not the fatherhood of God, at least the brotherhood of man. These roads are now being built in advance of the settlement of the country, and they are the only immediate means of opening the country to settlement. They are the pioneers of civilization. They bring the thousands of immigrants to their

homes, and make sure their success, transforming with that success dull and servile workers to active, intelligent and wealthy freemen. The network of steel is still spreading. In 1879, three thousand seven hundred and fifty miles were added to our total, and it is estimated that six thousand miles will be constructed in 1880, making the prospective mileage of January 1, 1881, ninetyone thousand five hundred and ninety-one miles of road. Now let us bear in mind that in all great achievements now progress. ing in human affairs, in the production or leading forth of the wealth of the mines, the forests and the soil, it is the railroads that have made all other inventions worth applying. That has caused abundance to rule where famine might have been; and that is now moulding the institutions of centuries to its imperative law. The next changed condition of farming interests consequent on railroad growth is, that the centers of wheat and corn. production are constantly moving, and both are moving westward. This would at first seem to interfere with our prospects by subjecting us to unfavorable competition with those having the cheap lands of the west. This is more apparent than real.

For in this, as in other things, "there is a Providence which shapes our ends," and above and beyond our wisdom. A system of balances and compensations seems to attend upon all improvement and all progress, which "would not be dreamed of in our philosophy."

Precisely the same condition of things, which is slowly but surely being brought about here, has already been reached in New England, and from the same causes. At present, nearly all the available surplus of the corn crop is found in the river states of the west, viz.: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri; while our lake states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, have barely enough for their own consumption. Of our wheat crop, the Atlantic states now produce only seventeen per cent., against thirty per cent. in 1860; the central belt of states has fallen during the same period from fifty-four per cent. to forty per cent., while the states west of the Mississippi have risen from fourteen per cent. to forty-two per cent. New England now produces only three-tenths of a bushel to each inhabitant,