FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT. 115 



Mr. Garfield : Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the 

 Horticultural Society and Friends: A newspaper reporter came to 

 me yesterday and in speaking of this evening's meeting asked what was 

 to be the keynote. I knew there were to be a dozen speeches, but it had 

 not occurred to me that there should be a keynote. The more I thought 

 of it, the more it seemed to me that the newspaper men had the right 

 sense of any meeting that might occur at any time. If he should come 

 to me and ask me the same question this minute, regarding this meet- 

 ing, I think I would be right in saying that the keynote is the ideal 

 in agriculture and how best to raise the standard of growing fruits 

 and vegetables and flowers and to receive and disseminate the best of 

 education, so that the horticulturists of Michigan shall be better horti- 

 culturalists because this organization exists. So you who may say a 

 word tonight, have this as a keynote, and there should be injected into 

 our etfort something more than mere intellect. There should be some- 

 thing started like the work of religious revivalists. We need to get 

 a little sentiment into our work, and into our thought. 



A few days ago I sat next to the ])resident of a society that was 

 talking to a gathering something like this, and they Avere having 

 speeches, and there came in a man for a talk that didn't have terminal 

 facilities. He tried to stop but could not. I pulled the coat-tail of the 

 president, and said, ''Is not this man's time up?" The reply was, "Oh 

 yes his time is up, but now he is starting on eternity." 



We are going to have ten short talks tonight, and they will be brief. 

 They cannot be more than four or five minutes each. The first senti- 

 ment that I have on my little slip of paper is, "Today's requirements 

 of our Society," and I am going to call on Billy Sunday — ^No, not Billy 

 Sunday, but George Friday to respond. 



Mr. Friday: In taking u]* this subject, after all the discussion that 

 has been had, reminds me of a story that I heard some time ago about 

 a negro — but let the story go. 



The needs of our Society are quite imperative in some lines. There 

 has been one continuous talk for a number of years about the State 

 appropriation that we once had but has now been cut oft", carrying the 

 impression that it was a calamity, but I want to tell you that it is 

 the very best thing that ever hai)pened to tlie Society. For forty-three 

 years we have been leaning on this appropriation and it is a good deal 

 like a young man who has leaned on his father for support and help 

 all these years. It is like leaning on a crutch, and when the crutch 

 is taken from us, it makes it doubly hard for us to hold our own. 



Now, the thing we have got to do, is to get out and boost for this 

 Society. They say we have only about four hundred active members — 

 one out of every one hundred horticulturists in the State. If we had all 

 these years been obliged to shift for ourselves, there would have been 

 some push and energy injected into the operation of the Society, and 

 we would have had a membership five times as large as this. And I 

 w^ant to tell you that we will have it that large pretty soon; and we 

 don't need so much Lyon as we have had, to carry it forward, and 

 to bring the Society to a point where it should be. We should have 

 a membership of at least five thousand, and I believe it can be bad if 



