VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 141 



from?" I said: "Why, you ought to know; of course sap comes from 

 saplings." 



Then he said: "There is Mr. Hitchcock; he is a breeder of fine stock; 

 can you tell me anything to say about the best feed for stock?" And I 

 said: "I really don't know much about feeding stock, but to my sor- 

 row I have learned from some of my Wall street friends a good deal 

 about watering stock." 



He said: "There is Mr. Aitken; he wants to talk about the Shrop- 

 shires. Southdowns, Merinos, etc., and I want to give him a good send 

 off; what shall I say?" I told him I did know something about shearing 

 myself, and I thought the best time for that was when the bulls and 

 bears were around. 



Ladies and gentlemen, I have talked nonsense long enough; I am 

 only to speak two or three minutes I believe. I agree with Mr. Van" 

 Dresser that the agricultural is the most important calling in the world. 

 You agriculturalists really are the kings of America. It is estimated, I 

 think, that from one-third to four-tenths of the people of this country 

 of the States and of the Territories, belong to the agricultural calling. 

 That from twenty-five to thirty-five millions of the seventy-five millions 

 are in some way or other interested in the tilling of the soil. From the 

 soil is drawn the wealth of this nation. You talk about the great 

 United States Steel Corporation that troubles the dreams of some of our 

 good people. My friends, the United States Steel Corporation, great 

 as it is, with its 350 million now of preferred stock, with its 550 millions 

 of common stock, its 312 millions of first mortgage bonds, and its 250 

 millions of second mortgage bonds, and about 15,000 millions of dollars, 

 what is that? It is all selling for about half that now. My friends, the 

 corn crop and the hay crop of last year will buy all the steel securities 

 at par, will buy them twice over at their selling value to-day. Your 

 cotton crop, your wheat crop will buy all those securities at their selling 

 value; then you will have 250 millions over in your pockets for pin money 

 and for the ladies. 



Mr. Wilson says, take the principal crops of this country and their 

 value last year amounts to three billion, five hundred millions of dol- 

 lars. Five times as much — and this is only one year's crop — five times as 

 much as the selling value of all the securities of this tremendous cor- 

 poration. 



Gentlemen, farmers, you could catch the United States Steel Cor- 

 poration, this sea serpent, if you were to try, and throttle it in a moment. 

 You farmers could put a hook in the nose of this leviathan and drive it 

 to the top of Mt. Mansfield if you wished. It is the agricultural interest 

 in this country that is the great over-reaching, over-shadowing interest. 

 We used to hear a great deal about the home market during the political 

 campaigns; it is the greatest market of the world; the market that 

 absorbed something like 90 per cent, of the agricultural products. We 

 are a manufacturing people too, and our manufacturing interests are the 

 largest in the world; our country, too, has become the grocery, as it has 



