STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 39 



tion, it has been found practical to collect such statistics through volun- 

 tary agents, who, without compensation, except the consciousness of 

 serving their country, devote their time and energies to the subject, and 

 under a system of reports to one common head, produce a result suffi- 

 ciently correct for all practical purposes. But in a State where the 

 facilities for travel, except on general routes to a few important locali- 

 ties, are so limited and expensive as in ours, and where so few of our 

 farmers have become so permanently fixed and devoted to their occupa- 

 tion as to inspire that interest in the cause necessary for such an under- 

 taking, and so few are able to afford the time and means for its faithful 

 execution,, such a sj^stem will be found, as it has already been found by 

 the last two years' efforts of this Board, almost totally inoperative. The 

 present S3'stem of reports by the County and District Assessors to the 

 Surveyor-General, has proved to be equally unreliable and uncertain, 

 only from one half to two thirds of the counties in the State being 

 reported at all, and these reports in manj^ instances being mere rough 

 estimates, instead of actual and careful counts. Statistics thus partial 

 and unreliable, in the opinion of the Board, tend rather to depreciate the 

 value and magnitude of our industrial resources, and to injure and pretju- 

 dice the impoi-fance and standing of our State, both among our own 

 people and abroad, than otherwise. 



Without narrating the history of the efforts of this Board, dui-ing the 

 session of the last Legislature, advised as they were by our immediate 

 predecessors, and seconded by every District and County Agricultural 

 Society in the State, to rectify these-evils, and to obtain the passage of 

 a law which would in our opinion have provided an efficient and effective 

 system by which reliable statistics relating to all our industries and pro- 

 ductions would have been obtained, we will venture to express the hope 

 that our next Legislature will take a more practical and comprehensive 

 view of the material w^antsof the State, and will comprehend and supply 

 the necessity of a system by which, through the proper channels, we maj'" 

 possess ourselves of a full sheet exhibiting all our productions and our 

 present and future capacities. One short statute that would eflFectually 

 accomplish this object, would be of a more real and lasting benefit to our 

 State than a whole volume of such laws as usually emanate from each 

 session of our Legislature. Upon this subject and the necessity of State 

 aid to agricultural societies, Dr. E. S. Ilolden, President of the San 

 Joaquin District Agricultural Society, than whom no man in the State 

 understands the State's necessities better, holds the following language 

 in his last annual address before that society : 



"Last 3-ear this society, together with several other similar associ- 

 ations, petitioned our Legislature to appropriate a few thousand dollars 

 for premium money; but our Solons failed to see the benefit of such 

 appropriations ; they ftiiled to see that three fourths of their constit- 

 uents w^ere pi'oducing by the sweat of their bi-ows their very existence, 

 their bread and butter. But there was one thing they could easily com- 

 prehend, and that was the value of bribe money to create and aid a host 

 of rascally franchises yearly springing up, from San Diego to Siskiyou, 

 from the Sierra to the Pacific. 



" Farmers and mechanics, protect your own interests — those interests 



■which contribute so largely to the wealth and iiulepcndence of nations. 



Elect, as it is in your power to do, legislators who can comprehend the 



interests of agriculture and manufactures, and who will honestly protect 



them." 

 s 



