113 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and culture, or at their Institutes, like the present, to discuss important ques- 

 tions of a,[;riculture and stock raising, whiclv shall inure to tlio benefit of theni- 

 selvcs primarily, and then to the world at large. And when I say to tlie world 

 at large, I have not in any sense taken too broad a scope of the inlUience of 

 JHtelligent farming in this country. 



By a reference to the statistics of exports from the United States, we find 

 that in the year 1878, for example, the total exports were of the value of 

 iiT23,000,000. And yet, of tliis great sum nearly 8000,000,000 was for agri- 

 cultural products alone, being 82 per cent of the entire value of exports for 

 that year. 



Thus we see how tiie industrious tillers of our soil are not only feeding 50,- 

 000,000 of our own people, but are adding 8000,000,000 a year to our wealth, 

 drawn from foreign countries, to say nothing of the millions which are added 

 almost daily to the value of our lands, by improving, beautifying, and making 

 comfortable the farmers' homes throughout our great country. 



It is then, by considering the aggregate that we are only enabled, frequently, 

 to fully realize and comprehend the magnitude of what we are accustomed to 

 look at in detail. Even the intelligent voter who deposits his ballot at the 

 polls, at an important political crisis, seldom stops to consider the importance 

 of tiiat act, except in itself, as a single vote cast, of small moment in the great 

 aggregate. So the prudent and industrious farmer, when he is enabled 

 to take his few hundred bushels of grain or other surplus products of his 

 farm to market, seldom looks beyond the money realized, and its contemplated 

 uses, although he returns home fully conscious of the value of every dollar 

 thus honestly earned by the sweat of the brow. Yet, although forgotten by 

 him, those products help to make up the grand aggregate of supplies for mil- 

 lions of people, and of wealth to our country. 



Through the influence of agricultural societies, agricultural schools, and 

 Farmers' Institutes, and do not let me omit, by any means, the agricultural 

 periodicals, to be a farmer is no longer synonymous with mere drudgery, in 

 which plenty of muscle is the only requisite, and plenty of brains a superfluity. 

 The American farmer of to day is rapidly becoming as skilled and proficient 

 in his occupation as the skilled artisan and professional man is in his business. 

 He is diligently and intelligently solving the problem of how to get the largest 

 number of bushels of grain, and consequently the most money, from the few- 

 est acres; the most money from the same number of sheep, cattle, and horses; 

 in short, how to make the farm pay the best with the least amount of physical 

 labor. To discuss this and similar questions, I suppose, we are assembled here 

 to-night, and that this Institute will prove both interesting and profitable, the 

 well-known intelligent faces before me are a most sufficient guaranty. 



And now', with these few informal remarks, and without keeping you longer 

 from the enjoyment of the interesting and instructive addresses which await 

 you, permit me, in behalf of the citizens of our beautiful village, to bid the 

 farmers of Macomb county and their visiting friends a most cordial welcome. 



Hon. J. Webster Childs gave the following address on 



FARMEKS' ORGANIZATIONS. 



AVithout organization civilized society cannot exist, but anarchy and barbar- 

 ism take its place. The great law of mutual dependence prevails throughout 

 all nature, both animate and inanimate. Nothing exists simply for the sake 

 of its own existence. And no created being lives that is not dependent upon 

 his fellow beings, to some extent at least, to make his life other tlian a burden. 



