SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 229 



The opening address of H. M. Larue, President of the State Agri- 

 cultural Society, is a refreshing departure from the stereotyped for- 

 mulas of gushing brag to which we have hitherto been accustomed. 

 That we have the finest climate, and can raise the finest pumpkins 

 in the world, is now generally conceded. I have not time to review 

 this address, and can only commend to our agricultural friends its 

 perusal in such of our daily and w r eekly journals as will give it 

 space. I would make only one criticism, and that is this: Mr. Larue 

 has treated farming solely from one standpoint, viz.: as a money 

 making industry. He sees in great fifty-thousand-acre farms, worked 

 by machinery, an evidence of the progress of the age. He advises 

 the construction of great warehouses, to be owned by farmers, and 

 regards the transportation question with reference to its profit to the 

 producer. All his reasoning tends to a consideration of the money 

 side of farming. Now, in my judgment, there are other and vastly 

 more important questions to be considered, and they all lie in the 

 direction of small farming, the raising of miscellaneous crops, the 

 effort to make the farm self-sustaining; to increase the number and 

 character of the families of a farming neighborhood ; the multipli- 

 cation of school houses ; to beautify the landscape by the planting of 

 fruit, ornamental, and forest trees ; drainage with reference to health ; 

 experimenting in the direction of increasing the comforts and pleas- 

 ures and refinements of life; elevating society to a higher plane, and 

 one upon which the pillars of our republican government shall rest 

 upon a better and firmer basis, than a community where a few great 

 fifty-thousand-acre farmers exploit the soil by machinery, and the 

 employment of less than three hundred men. Such farming as this 

 may enrich the particular owner, but it introduces a feudal system. 

 It makes the State a wilderness, and brings society back to the bar- 

 barism of the mediaeval age. It destroys homes and the family. It 

 breeds tramps and idlers. It destroys churches and school houses. 

 It would in time present the great, beautiful valleys of our State as 

 treeless, verdureless plains. All our ideas and recollections of farm 

 life come from an entirely different condition of things. My father's 

 farm in Western New York was one hundred and fifty acres of land, 

 upon the banks of a beautiful creek, in the County of Genesee. Its 

 water power afforded the opportunity of a sawmill and a linseed oil 

 mill. Up and down the creek were other mills, for flouring, sawing 

 stone, carding wool, turning woods, and so on through all the line of 

 simple manufacturing industries. The bottom land was rich in 

 grasses, upon which was kept a small dairy of well bred cows. This 

 land furnished clay, from which we burned an annual kiln of brick, 

 to sell to our neighbors. About forty acres a year was devoted to the 

 cultivation of wheat, alternating the crop, and fertilizing the soil by 

 red clover turned under in the fall plowing. This clover gave honey 

 from half a dozen hives of bees. Our orchard bore Summer and 

 Winter fruit, great, hard, juicy apples, and cider for the Winter 

 nights, when we gathered around the mother's table to study and to 

 read, or to indulge in the games and pleasures of a long, cold, 

 country evening. 



On this farm, fenced in small fields with an old fashioned Virginia 

 rail fence, with the largest rail on top, we raised oats, potatoes, and 

 corn. Between the rows of corn we raised pumpkins, and from 

 pumpkins, pies. We dried the pumpkins for Winter use. Plums, 

 cherries, pears, and peaches were among our fruits. These w T ere pre- 



