STATE AGRICULTl KA!, SOCIETY. 9 



OPENING ADDRESS. 



Deliverrd in the Pavilion, Sacramento, Tuesday Evening, September 21, L880, by II. M. 



Larue, President of the State Board of Agriculture. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: Long established custom has assigned 

 to the President of the State Board of Agriculture the duty of extend- 

 ing a formal welcome and courteous greeting to members of the State 

 Agricultural Society and visitors to the annual exhibition. It is also 

 an established custom on these occasions to inaugurate the annual 

 exhibition by the formality of an opening address. In its inception, 

 nothing beyond the welcome already alluded to, and an official dec- 

 laration that all parts of the exhibition were completely organized, 

 and fully opened to inspection, was contemplated by this ceremony. 

 But custom has enlarged upon this original idea, and has expanded 

 the opening address into the proportions of an annual message from 

 the executive bead of the society, in which the largest latitude in the 

 way of report, suggestion, and discussion has been indulged. 



In discharging the duty thus made incumbent upon the President 

 of the State Board of Agriculture, permit me to call your attention, 

 first, to the changes made in the laws of our State concerning the 

 organization, appointment, and powers of the Board. Very early in 

 the history of this State, the people recognized the great educational 

 advantages of agricultural and mechanical exhibitions, and the value 

 to intelligent industry of agricultural and mechanical societies. The 

 law organizing a State Board of Agriculture, and incorporating the 

 State Agricultural Society, was among the earliest placed upon our 

 statute books. 



From time to time liberal appropriations from the State Treasury 

 in aid of the Society, and in promotion of its annual exhibitions, 

 have been made. But the new Constitution, ratified in eighteen hun- 

 dred and seventy-nine, contained a sweeping prohibition against 

 appropriations from the public treasury for the benefit of any corpo- 

 rations or associations not under the exclusive management and con- 

 trol of the State. While under the law of eighteen hundred and 

 fifty-two the State Board of Agriculture was the creature of the State, 

 and while by that Act a Department of Agriculture was created as a. 

 department of State government, still the members of the Board 

 were chosen by annual mass meetings of members of the State Agri- 

 cultural Society, in which only members of the Society were eligible 

 to vote. The State Agricultural Society also possessed the right of 

 control of the annual exhibitions, and the power to adopt, alter, or 

 amend the articles of association and the rules governing the Board. 

 The corporation was not under the exclusive control of the State as 

 a distinctively State institution, and therefore within tie- category of 

 associations ineligible to receive any gift, grant, aid, or subsidy from 

 the State Treasury. All this has been changed. By the Act of 

 eighteen hundred and eighty the Board of Agriculture is appointed 

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