I48 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Fate, or some other such deity. If we learn nothing more than 

 that we can study and arrive at accurate results in relation to 

 the lines in which we are working, we have gained a great deal 

 from coming to this meeting. 



Governments all over the world vary in power and influence, 

 and governments are powerful and great only as the people that 

 compose them are prosperous. Governments do not consist of 

 grand forests, broad prairies, immense water powers and tower- 

 ing mountains ; governments consist of people. If all these 

 natural features made a government, there was the grandest gov- 

 ernment which ever existed before an inhabitant ever trod the 

 soil of the universe, but that is not the case. The forests were 

 worthless until the people made use of them, and all of these 

 beautiful resources of nature which we admire and which we 

 utilize were absolutely worthless until the people made something 

 out of them. When the people are prosperous, then the nation 

 is great. I only have to refer to a few nations, by name, for 

 you to see that very clearly. People that try to live by exploiting 

 others are not prosperous and they fall. There was that old 

 government of Rome, with beautiful buildings, great works of 

 art, sculpture, etc., but the people of Rome did not earn that by 

 honest toil. They gained it by war and plunder, by robbing 

 other people. The Spaniards for several centuries were the 

 most powerful nation in the world, but how did they acquire that 

 power? Not by tilling the soil and digging gold and silver out 

 of their own mines, for their soil is still uncultivated and their 

 mines still undeveloped. They did it by trying to exploit others. 

 They came over to this country and obtained gold and silver 

 from "the inhabitants by violence and treachery. Spanish pros- 

 perity endured for a while, but the people were badly trained, 

 they were not prosperous through industry, and other nations 

 became superior to them. The people of Holland almost whipped 

 them off the face of the earth, and, since that, other nations have 

 had a trial and nearly every nation in Europe has whipped Spain 

 within the last four or five hundred years. Now they are begin- 

 ning to dig in their own soil, and if they ever amount to anything 

 it will be because the people work and become prosperous. 



England a few years ago (forty or fifty) had a theory that 

 every man was entitled to so much for existing, whether he 

 worked or not, and so laws were enacted which established what 



