FOURTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 325 



prices, as well as nominations. The coffee market of the country has 

 lately gone out of the region of unorganized supply and demand into 

 the hands of a cofi'ee excliange, with all the modern improvements 

 for speculation. A price factory, to make quotations for butter and 

 cheese, has just been established in New York. It deals in l)rokers' 

 eggs as well as hens' eggs, and has all the approved facilities to enable 

 it to count and sell chickens that are not yet hatched out of eggs that 

 are not yet laid." To one not initiated into the sharp ju-actice of these 

 speculators, it would appear unjust for the pi'oducer to be placed at 

 the mercy of these soulless organizations. According to the ideas of 

 justice entertained by our fatliers, those who toil ought to reap the 

 rewards of their industry. 



But in considering this as well as other subjects, we must not forget 

 that we are living in a progressive age, and that the standard of ethics 

 is a varialde quantity. However, no one hut a misanthrope would 

 wish for a return of the good old days of fifty or a liundred years ago. 

 While at that time there was a remarkable dearth of star route con- 

 spirators and impenitent market manipulators, yet it must be admitted 

 that advancing civilization has brought with it advantages to all 

 classes that make life worth more now than ever before in the history 

 of the world. Although the great power of wealth in unscrupulous 

 hands is too often used to retard the progress and jeopardize the 

 interests of our industrial classes, yet the inventive genius of this age 

 and the powers of the human mind have lightened the burdens and 

 multiplied the comforts of the toiling millions of our race._ Happy 

 for us if our Laboring classes accept with becoming grace the increased 

 responsibilities, the more exacting requirements, the larger career of 

 usefulness that the progress of the years will necessarily bring them. 



The majority of our thoughtful men, those who are skillful in 

 interpreting the logic of events, whose earnest attention has been 

 devoted to the progress of society, with great unanimity declare that 

 the race will not falter in its onward and upward career. It is the 

 idlest speculation to attempt to portray, in all its details, the condi- 

 tion of those who shall be so fortunate as to live upon this little earth 

 one hundred years hence. I say fortunate — why? Because every 

 man is fortunate who has great opportunities, ample powers, gener- 

 ous inducements, potential impulses, capacious knowledge, especially 

 if all these are enlisted in the accomplishment of noble purposes. 

 Would it not be unfortunate for us to have lived a hundred years 

 ago? How much valuable experience the world has had since our 

 fathers laid the foundations of this government! How the horizon 

 of the world's knowledge has been extended and what an impulse 

 has been communicated to those agencies that distinguish man from 

 the beasts of the field ! But the succeeding age will be panoplied 

 with a greater measure of power than this. So we conclude from an 

 observation of the forces at work in society, and from the careful 

 judgment of those whose opinions are entitled to respect. May our 

 souls be attuned to the music of- still higher progress, and may we be 

 prepared for any responsibility that the future has in store for us. 



