5J80 STA ri: BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



very nuicli ii'ul tlio rapid !i2;riculturiil development of this territory. If you 

 wili you can establish close business relations with the jieople tliereof. You 

 can brinf]f tliein and their products largely to your doors. All tliis you canuot 

 hope for by pursuing a course of indiii'erence aiul inaction. The country is 

 new; it is growing rapidly; if you will encourage and keep i)ace with this 

 growth, the future for you is secure. Ivcinember the ciiannels of trade and 

 commerce, when once opened and established, arc hard to stem and more diffi- 

 cult to divert. You may create a channel in this direction over which tlie 

 current of trade and business shall cease not to flow steadily and with increased 

 volume. To do this you must know the people and their wants. You must 

 sympathize with them and assist them and establish those symj)athetic friendly 

 business relations which increase and grow stronger each succeeding year. 



But what are or are likely to be their Avants? New highways that will help 

 open u}) the country and bring the travel and traffic this way where it naturally 

 belongs. Already a line of railroad runs up the central and western portions 

 of this territory, which will soon be extended to tlie straits. Another is wanted 

 to tap this and extend up and secure the shore trade. Encourage and assist 

 this. Wliat farther are they likely to want? Agricultural implements. Here 

 is a want to be supplied that will increase year by year, and shall have no end. 

 This river affords every facility for their manufacture, yet our j)lows, our drags 

 and cultivators, our reapers and threshers, our wagons and carriages, all, yes, 

 I may say all these are made outside the valley and shipped to meet the 

 demand. 



Villages have sprung up and will continue to do so. There will be a mer- 

 cantile business, a demand for groceries, dry goods, hardware, and all the 

 other articles usually found in a country store ; because if your water and 

 railroad facilities you should be able to successfully compete for, secure and 

 retain this trade largely. 



In this respect I am very well pleased with the progress that has been made 

 — see that it does not lag. 



Again, you must be prepared to purchase their wheat, their butter, their 

 "wool, and their pork, for where they sell they will be likely to purchase. 

 Manufacture what you can of the wheat and the wool, convert their fresh pork 

 into bacon, hams, etc., thus creating and building up new industries, giving 

 employment to laborers and building up the population and wealth of your 

 cities. 



If you will think of and carry out these suggestions as you may deem right 

 and proper, then I predict that when the lumber trade ceases, as cease it must, 

 you will have established new branches of industry and have obtained a com- 

 mercial business and importance far more valuable tlian anything you have 

 yet had. 



If you do not, if you permit the surplus products of the people to sail past 

 you, or simply be carried across your rivers and through your cities, on its way 

 to a market without stopping, then your wharves will become rotten and value- 

 less, and silence will reign wliere now the sound of machinery is heard. 



Fifty, yea one hundrod millions in value of products may pass through your 

 city every year on the iron rail and benefit your city scarcely a dollar. Kesi- 

 dents in the cities on the Saginaw river, see to it that such be >iot your fate. 



