STATE HOKTICTJLTUKAl, SOCIETY. 



73 



friends from sister States will excuse us if we of Illinois indulge a little, 

 even in this presence, in the expression of our just pride and patriotic 

 love for the beautiful and bountiful region of country which we claim as 

 our own. It stretches out in its wide area over flower-decked prairies, 

 diversified woodlands and sun-glorified landscapes ; it reaches down 

 through feet and fathoms of fertile soil and mines of measureless wealth; 

 it extends upward through fragrant air 



" Laden with the breath cf orchards 

 Big with bending fruit " 



to the silvery clouds of sunny skies. The sun himself looks out from his 

 throne of midday splendor and lovingly smiles upon the fair face of 

 favored Illinois. 



The love of home and country is instinctive in every human breast, 

 and its exercise gratifying and ennobling even in inhospitable climates 

 and in Nature's roughest regions; but happy, thrice happy we whose 

 patriotic love and pride is strengthened and exalted by dwelling in this 

 garden of the Lord. Happy, thrice happy the cherished children of our 

 fragrant and fruitful prairie State ! We surely have the material elements 

 of a rich and prosperous commonwealth, the essential physical conditions 

 for an enterprising and progressive people ; we have, as can scarcely be 

 found anywhere else on this great, green earth, the combination of all 

 the diversified material requisites for happy homes and cultured citizens, 

 and so we have the natural requirements upon which may be based an 

 exalted and ennobled civilization, and an enlightened and elevated social, 

 political and moral life. 



No people confined to arid plains, parched by long-continued 

 drouth, dwelling upon sterile soils walled about by rocky barriers and 

 pinched to the extremity of life for food and fuel, can take many steps, 

 at least in our day, in solving the great problem of man's social and 

 moral advancement. It is essential for progress, it is a primary requisite, 

 as a foundation upon which may be erected the proud structure of a fully 

 developed humanity, that the climate be favorable and that mother 

 Earth lend her increase in such manner and proportion that the question 

 of "what shall ye eat and wherewithal shall ye be clothed" shall not be 

 too hard to answer. An abundant food supply secured by an appropriate 

 equivalent in labor is a corner-stone of wide dimensions in the magnifi- 

 cent temple of human development. Freedom from the thralldom of 

 unconquerable poverty, from the servitude of persistent and pinching 

 privation, is an admission ticket, written by sovereign hand, to the glowing 

 vestibule of this temple, where encouraging sounds may be caught of the 

 inspiring music within. 



It is the great province of Agriculture to furnish the world with the 

 staple articles of food, and it is to the prosperity of agriculture in our 

 State that we must look for this fundamental basis of prosperity for 

 our people. Conditioned upon its rise must also be conditioned their 

 rise and progress in the scale of physical and intellectual development. 

 And Agriculture comes before Horticulture. The fields must be plowed. 



