State Agricultural Society. 99 



tliirty-one that the plowing of lands received proper attention in 

 the mother country. Then the Durham and Alderney breeds of 

 cattle, and the Leicester and Cotswold breeds of sheej) came into 

 notice; and. since eighteen hundred the progress of agriculture has 

 been so rapid as to outstrip all the i)receding triumphs. 



For a while America was content to follow the agricultural prac- 

 tices of Continental Europe, but now, as I have said, she points out 

 and leads the way, and can furnisii bread and meat for the civilized 

 world. The substantial triumjdis of this country have been in the 

 mechanical dei)artments, and though 1 have generally referred to the 

 advances made, I cannot refrain from giving a more detailed list of 

 the improvements due to the skill, and genius, and energy of the 

 American. He was the first to reduce the weigiit of the plow; the 

 first to use steel shares; the first to plow Indian corn. The reaping 

 cradle is American; so are horse rakes, hay tedders, fanning mills," 

 threshers, headers, potato diggers, corn buskers, etc. The catalogue 

 is too long, for in axes, scythes, hoes, spades, nearly every instrument 

 of farm and manual labor, in fact, our manufacturers show decided 

 superiority. The American farmer, and the Californian in particu- 

 lar, plods along in no one furrow, but strikes out boldly across 

 untrodden fields, and walks in unfrequented paths. He exi)eriments 

 with the ardor of the alchemist and the boldness of a Frankenstein. 

 He impresses the very elements into his service, and would as soon 

 reap his crops by electricity as by steam. If some untrammeled spirit 

 discovered an aero-electric seeder, there are a thousand farmers in 

 this State who would have their own battery and balloon skimming 

 over the fields at tilling time. He has fought against water and lor 

 water. The rush-fringed river lands have been made to yield, and 

 the sea-like steppe and grassy waste are covered with his fiocks. 

 His solid, humdrum assiduity is less perhaps than that of his fathers, 

 but as a clear-headed man, as free to act as to think, he has no supe- 

 rior in the world. The American farmer has made his mark, and 

 has, in the words of Horace Greeley, "accomi)lished much, resulting 

 in beneficial improvement of boundless scope and promise." 



But in the face of all this, it has been reserved until this late day 

 for the farmers to meet with an opposition, infamous in its conception 

 and destructive in its tendencies. They are told that all these im- 



Erovements to which I have referred, and these advances that have 

 een made, all these inventions that have been perfected, must stand 

 still; that the use of agricultural machines and instruments, labor- 

 saving apparatus and farm attributes, must be given up antl destroyed, 

 and that the farmer of the nineteenth century must go back to the 

 time when plowing Avas done by a forked branch from a tree, and 

 this at the insolent demand of roving, i)lundering, thieving bands, 

 sent from foreign lands to assist as far as practicable in destroying 

 our free institutions-^enforcing a living from the honest and indus- 

 trious — their only claim being that they are of the tram]> ])ersuasion. 

 Already has the torch done its work in our country in the ruthless 

 destruction of unofiending agricultural implements by foreign emis- 

 saries. l>ut I thank (Jod,l'rom the bottom of my heart, that in Lim- 

 erick, Ireland, the county will have to })ay $(),.SU5 as damages for the 

 burning of barns and ricks, and smashing of gates, which the peas- 

 ants indulged in by way of protesting against the introduction of 

 agricultural machinery. 



Heretofore California has been happily free from the curse of dem- 



