214 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



ANNUAL OPENING ADDRESS, 



DELIVEEED BY 



DR. E. S. HOLDEN, 



PRESIDENT OP THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Members of the San Joaquin Valley District Agricultural Society : • 



Gentlemen: — For the sixth time we meet to celehrate our annual 

 exhibition of the products of industr}', to behold familiar laces beaming 

 with pensive pleasure, or lighted up with eager and joyous enthusiasm ; 

 on eveiy hand we meet cheerful greetings, sunny smiles, and coi'dial 

 congratulations. Whence springs this fraternity of feeling, this benev- 

 olent impulse of generous hearts, this glowing sunshine of the soul, 

 gleaming all around Avith gladness, but from the instinctive consciousness 

 of the moral grandeur of the occasion — a consciousness of contributing 

 to the maintenance of the true dignit}^ of labor; to the elevation of the 

 working man, and to the improvement of the industrious arts — a con- 

 sciousness of exerting a wide-spreading and fai'-reaching influence for 

 good on human progress and civilization ? 



We have but just emerged from the sraoke and din of the battlefield 

 and the deadly strifes of a civil war, and, more recently, from the excite- 

 ment of a county election, where political differences exist, and iriends 

 combat with the significant privilege, the ballot, to elect a friend to 

 position, or an honest candidate to office; but hero all political distinctions 

 vanish, and we stand as a band of brothers to distribute our works of 

 industr}-, labor, and experience, for the benefit of all; to those from the 

 South and from the North, from the East and from the West, to congi-at- 

 ulate each other for a fruitful and bounteous harvest, and a ha]i]n' return 

 of this festive occasion, the importance of which cannot be over estimated. 

 It is an occasion worthy of an enlightened and enthusiastic people. 



Members of this society, by your confidence and kindness you have 

 retained me for the last five years as your President, and as a customary 

 consequence, I have delivered to j'ou as man}' annual addresses, in which 

 I have made made agricultural societies, and the material which con- 



