STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 205 



promise. The show of cattle was also large, and included a herd jiLst 

 imported to the State from Missouri. All the other classes of live 

 stock were also well represented. In the machinery department there 

 was less of general machinery than at some previous fairs, but more 

 agricultural machinery. 



There was no opening address, and A. A. Sargent delivered the 

 annual address. He discussed at length and with great force the 

 whole subject of the agitation against railroads then going on in the 

 Western States and California; showed the effect of the Illinois law 

 to be detrimental to the best interests of that State by driving through 

 freight from roads crossing the State, and thus forcing those roads to 

 depend alone for business upon local freights, which were incapable 

 of meeting the expenses of maintaining the roads without an advance 

 on rates such as the local business was unable to pay; that similar 

 laws in this State would operate in a similar manner and place the 

 interior under the same disadvantages they labored under before the 

 road across the continent was built; argued that the proposed Con- 

 gressional legislation, requiring the Pacific railroad companies to pay 

 the interest as it accrued on the Government bonds issued to induce 

 their construction, would have the effect of transferring the burden 

 of meeting this interest from the whole country, when the bonds 

 became due, to tlie State of California as the interest accumulated, as 

 additional burdens on these roads would have to be met by additional 

 burdens on the people who supported them. 



He regretted and denounced the attempts of demagogues to array 

 labor against capital, to excite the hatred of the poor against the 

 rich : 



There is nothing new in attempts to decry the rich and excite the enmity of the poor against. 

 them. Assaults against capital have often been made the resources of politicians to advance 

 personal aims. A raid against associated capital is a raid against industry and enterprise. By 

 associated capital the great business interests of the world are conducted and employment is 

 given to busy millions. 



He quoted from the speech of Daniel Webster, in the United 

 States Senate, against the removal of deposits, as follows: 



" The natural hatred of the poor against the rich !" " The danger of a moneyed aristocracy !" 

 " A power as great as that resisted by the revolntion !" "A call to a new declaration of inde- 

 pendence!" Sir, I admonish the jDeople against the objects of outcries like these. I admonish 

 every industrious laborer in the country to be on his guard against such delusions. I tell him 

 the attempt is made to play off his passions against his interests, and to prevail on him, in the 

 name of liberty, to destroy the fruits of liberty; in the name of his own independence, to 

 destroy that independence and make him a beggar or slave. Has he a dollar, he is advised to 

 do that which will destroy half its value. Has he hands to labor, let him rather fold them and 

 sit still, than be pushed on by fraud and artifice to supjDort measures which will render his labor 

 fruitless and hopeless. 



Mr. Sargent closed as follows: "I trust the day will come when 

 neither enmity nor friendship to railways will be a text in politics; 

 when instead of poisonous agencies of disintegration between the 

 farmers and merchants and mechanics and transportation compa- 

 nies, there will be a mutual spirit of fairness and accommodation. 

 The interests of labor and capital, of production and transportation, 

 are interlaced, and all prosper at the same time and only in the same 

 degree." 



This year the Board purchased the grounds east of the brick wall 

 of the Park, inclosed the same, and erected cattle stalls and other- 

 buildings thereon. They also issued and sold over one hundred life 



