SEVENTEENTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 697 



averted over three hundred years ago. One stands aghast at the vast 

 wealth that is accumulating in the hands of a few men. Where there is 

 this great wealth there must be corresponding great poverty. To-day we 

 hear often that hated, despised term, "the lower classes." Who are the 

 "lower classes?" There is no caste recognized by the government. It is 

 a term which owes its origin to the distinction now so wide between the 

 rich and the poor. Happily we have had little trouble in this State, so 

 far, principally because the managers of the great corporations are among 

 the pioneers of the State, who started with us upon a common plane and 

 shared with us the pains and privations of a pioneer life and are therefore 

 more liberal. But when they shall have passed away, look for it, the 

 trouble will begin. What mean the strikes, the conventions, and com- 

 plaints of the workingmen in the East? Surely there must be some griev- 

 ous wrong somewhere. Surely some men are trodden down. Surely the 

 men who so eloquently plead for the right to earn an honest living, justly 

 requited, must have felt the iron hand of oppression. The truth is, the 

 times are out of joint. The cities are overcrowded. Men are but half 

 learned in their trades. The boys have left the farms for the dazzling and 

 alluring lights of the cities. Americans have no fight to make against 

 capital. They are neither agrarians nor socialists. There is no field here 

 for the pestilential theories of such. Yet the doctrine of these agitators 

 among a certain class of our citizens is taking root, and we should be pre- 

 pared for the emergency that may arise. Let us recognize the fact that 

 property is unequally distributed and provide the remedy. Revolution 

 cannot be thought of. The forcible taking of property can scarcely engage 

 the American mind, although I must confess that in the last Legislature I 

 heard some speeches that indicated how easy it is when a man wants any- 

 thing, to satisfy himself with any reason why he should take and keep it. 

 I know of no better remedy than to deflect the current of young men, now 

 tending to cities, to the rural districts. In this State the remedy is easier 

 applied than in any part of the Union, for the reason that the products of 

 our soil are in part luxuries and command a remuneration ten times an 

 acre the products of eastern farms. Forty acres here are as valuable as 

 one hundred and sixty east of the Rocky Mountains. Begin the remedy 

 at once. Educate your children to look upon a farm as the best place to 

 fulfill all the conditions of a happy life. Show them that in mercantile 

 life not more than ten per cent of those engaged in it are successful. Point 

 to them the fact that professional men seldom are rich. Nay, I shall en- 

 gage to show that where a physician or lawyer has accumulated a fortune, 

 that is, as a fortune is considered to-day, he has acquired it rather by spec- 

 ulation than by the pursuit of his profession. But I have not time to elab- 

 orate on this question. I leave it for you to consider. 



If you dream for your children of the pomp of power, of fame's high 

 steep for them to climb, know that the men who have moved and are 

 moving the world, who walk triumphant in the realm of thought, were 

 born and nurtured amid rural scenes. Nearly all the Presidents of the 

 United States — I cannot recall an exception — were either born on a farm 

 or became farmers in later life. Washington, Jefferson, the Adamses, 

 Monroe, Madison, Jackson, were all born and died on farms. Even Lin- 

 coln, one of the grandest figures of this century, though he did not follow 

 farming, first saw the light of day on a western farm. And who knows 

 how much the rugged grandeur of his nature, his fortitude under difficulty 

 and suffering, were due to his training in early life as a farmer's boy. 



Let us turn to discuss the material advantages of agriculture in these 

 foothills. The early miner, as he delved in the river and sluiced the 



