THIRD DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 555 



the thermometer of civilization as speeds the plow. A tree no more draws 

 its life from the soil than does society. When the pioneer hunter, or trap- 

 per, or miner, puts in his first crop of grain, he turns out of the bypath of 

 precarious subsistence into the high road of permanent prosperity, and 

 half an acre furnishes him as much support as eight hundred acres as a 

 hunting range. The products of the soil freight our railroads, furnish the 

 cargoes to our ships, and bring to us that balance of trade which means 

 prosperity and plenty, and the business of the country trembles in the 

 balance till Providence determines the quantity and quality of crops, and 

 until the prairies of Illinois and the plains of Butte and Tehama Counties 

 are heard from. Strike from society all the professions; let the mercantile, 

 and the medical, and the clerical, and even the legal professions, become 

 obsolete, and society would survive them all, for humanity existed for ages 

 without them. But paralyze for one year the farmer's arm ; let the plow 

 stand for one year idle in the furrow, or the husbandman's labor fail, and 

 the locomotive would rot on its iron rails, and the great ships drop to pieces 

 in the harbor. Nay, more, gaunt famine would stalk through the earth, 

 and every house would be filled with wailing, as were those of Egypt on 

 that awful passover night, and every mother would be a Rachel weeping 

 for her children, and refusing to be comforted because they are not. 



'' My lord rides thro' the palace gate, 

 My lady sweeps along in state, 

 The sage thinks long on many a thing, 

 And the maiden muses on marrying; 

 The minstrel harpeth merrily, 

 The sailor plows the foaming sea, 

 The huntsman kills the good red deer, 

 And the soldier wars without a fear, 

 Nevertheless, whate'er befall, 

 The farmer he must feed them all." 



If all the products of the earth raised this year in our own country were 

 placed in a bin as wide and as high as this pavilion, it would reach from 

 the Golden Gate to the Sierras, across the Rocky Mountains, across the 

 Mississippi Valley, to the Alleghanies, to the Atlantic. These products 

 would load a great table reaching five times around the earth at the equa- 

 tor, at which all earth's population might sit down, and three times a day 

 for six months that table — such a table as God spreads every day — could 

 be replenished from the annual products of American agriculture. For 

 our agricultural products this year amount to three and one half thousand 

 million dollars in valuation. 



And not only is the farmer a finite providence, but he is a finite creator 

 as well. His is the only avocation upon which is put the high honor of 

 finishing and improving the Creator's work. It was the skill and labor of 

 man that made Eden what it was, and so when Adam was ejected for tres- 

 passing it went back to wild land again, and its very site is now unknown. 

 But labor restores to man the Eden that he has lost. At its command the 

 cherubim sheathe their swords and stand aside, and man walks once more 

 in an Eden as lovely as were the blissful bowers of the first paradise. 

 Labor makes the wilderness and the solitary place to blossom as the rose. 

 It lays its hand upon the very productions of nature, and its touch is as 

 the touch of Midas, which turned everything into gold. God seems to 

 have only made some things in the rough, and to have left it for man to 

 put on the finishing touches. The apples that blush at praise of their own 

 loveliness in your orchards were but sour and knotty crabs until intelligent 

 labor trained them into lusciousness and largeness. Wheat was a little 

 kernel like wild rice or chess in its natural state, and only became edible 



