460 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



THE ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



Delivered by H. V. Morehouse. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: When the President of this 

 Agricultural Association, Hon. Jesse D. Carr, informed me that I had heen 

 chosen to deliver the annual address, I was astonished. I thought, what 

 do I know upon the subjects interesting to the people, and which give life 

 and prosperity to the great industries that are advertised by public Fairs ? 

 Was I a Horace Greeley, who knew all about farming, that I should be 

 chosen? Was I a Cincinnatus, who should be brought from the fields, not 

 to lead victorious armies, but to throw out among the people ideas fresh, 

 sparkling, and glowing with the roseate hues of new possibilities ? No. I 

 was neither. I was simply the plodding lawyer, whose mind was inter- 

 ested in legal conundrums, policies of local and State government, the 

 rights of individuals and the public. And yet I have an interest deepl} r 

 interweaved amid all the industries which go to build up the prosperity of 

 this county and this State. 



Somehow every man in the Avorld has his place. Some way every life 

 teaches a lesson. By some means every business occupation is linked and 

 dependent upon some other business. The lawyer has his sphere. Gov- 

 ernment could not exist without him. Individual liberty is dependent 

 upon him. The merchant has his world — a little microcosm of his own — 

 and yet he is dependent. The banker, too, is fixed, amid the currency of 

 the nation, and yet so dependent that one law passed by Congress would 

 destroy his occupation in an hour. So society is linked and united — each 

 business or occupation overlapping and dependent upon the other, like the 

 dovetailing in a piece of carpentry; but underlying all, the foundation stone 

 upon which the superstructure of the Government rests, the business upon 

 which all others rests, is agriculture. Its history starts with the creation 

 of man. Its growth commenced with the dawn of mental intelligence. 

 Without agriculture the world would perish. It is therefore the first and 

 the greatest of all occupations, and should therefore be encouraged by every 

 means which man can invent. One of the means adopted is public Fairs; 

 but do we rightly understand that public Fairs are only the means of exhib- 

 iting the progress of farming, stock-raising, and personal skill in every in- 

 dustry? Or do we look upon public Fairs as the means of bringing together 

 people skilled in games of chance, to set examples of moral turpitude which 

 steal into the lives of our boys and girls and warp noble natures capable of 

 great usefulness into beings of vice? I hope not. I hope that the under- 

 lying principle of agricultural Fairs will not be lost sight of because sur- 

 rounding them the pestilential breath of vice sometimes lingers. I hope to 

 see the day when the farming community shall look upon farming with the 

 pride that the inventor looks upon the machinery evolved by the powerful 

 effort of his mind. I want to see farmers looking upon their work as noble, 

 honorable, and great. 



No man can make a great success unless he loves his business. He 

 must take a pride in his work, until his work becomes a part of himself. 

 The lawyer who thinks the practice of the law a drudgery will never be 

 known in the work of legal excellency, further than the name written on 

 his signboard, pointing to his office. The stock-raiser who raises fine cattle 



