99 



ride around the boundary fences of your estates; you have grain 

 fields that would cover your grandfather's entire farm and those of 

 his three neighbors; you run your furrows a mile long; you inclose 

 half a mountain range for grazing purposes, and count your sheep 

 and cattle by the thousands. Surely it will not be contended, in the 

 face of these facts, that this gigantic style of work is going to "duli " 

 a man. 



Time was when the observance of the seasons was as rigid as a 

 flag-post, and when experimenting with crops was regarded as trifling 

 with Providence. Here in California a free and easy treatment of 

 the months obtains. Sowing tide may be fixed by opportunity and 

 not by the almanac, and if the barley looks unpromising and there 

 is the chance of its not graining, the mowing-machine is sent into 

 the field and you make hay whilst the sun shines. Nor does the 

 be-spectacled and be-wigged law of custom bind you down and keep 

 you back; because a certain style of tillage was deemed best, and a 

 certain soil was supposed to be fitted only for raising a certain crop, 

 used to be held (and is yet held in certain places) sufficient reason 

 to restrain the farmer from stepping outside the customary road — 

 but now, and here, you strike off at abrupt tangents, throw over the 

 wooden figure of precedent, and set up the live leader of adaptabil- 

 ity, kick down the scare-crow "What has been," and set up the 

 potentate " What can be." 



Time was, again, when a weekly jog to the nearest market town, or 

 the occasional visit of the middleman, constituted the sole means 

 available for the disposal of produce. It is not so now, and here. 

 The railway flashes through the land, tapping every section of the 

 country, or the rivers are dotted with wharves and landings, and 

 intercouse with the markets is at once rapid and close. There is, in 

 fact, progress everywhere, and progress never yet " dulled " a man. 



As I am becoming, and intend to be throughout, slightly argu- 

 mentative in this address, it will be perhaps wise to make the line of 

 reasoning thoroughly distinct. To aid in this, bear for one minute 

 with three words of recapitulation. I started in, then, Mr. President, 

 to uphold the dignity of agriculture. As the best possible method 

 of getting at the value of a proposition is that of discussion, and as 

 discussion cannot exist without parties, I introduced on the contra 

 side the townsman who spoke disparagingly of the countryman, and 

 then tried to prove, by a rapid glance at the countryman's present 

 style of life, that the townsman is wrong. If I have not succeeded, 

 the fault lies in the poverty of my argument and not of my subject. 

 I have a good case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and I want to 

 win it. 



But the actual weight of a man's opinion derogatory to the dignity 

 of agriculture would be too trifling to merit notice were it not that 

 its expression breeds a dangerous outgrowth. The labor market is 

 affected. The body that should be so healthy and so willing to lay 

 hands on the plow is sickly and shirks the job. The employment of 

 white labor on your farms is difficult enough, the retaining of that 

 labor is still more difficult, and you will, I know, bear me out in the 

 statement that one of the curses of the workingman of to-day is the 

 absurd and cowardly opinion he holds, that to be a farm-hand is to 

 be something degraded, and is to occupy a mud-hole in the Slough 

 of Despond ! 



I am not familiar with your opinions on the Chinese question, but 



