458 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



I hear of other enterprises looking to a great system of irrigation for the 

 whole valley. Let them receive every encouragement, for in their success 

 lies the future of this wonderful region. 



In all regions of country there must be a center of trade, a commercial 

 rallying point and emporium of exchange. Nature has made the City of 

 Stockton the focal point for the commerce and traffic of this great valley. 

 There is more than a promise that you are to have natural gas in abun- 

 dance; it seems almost a realization. It would be hard to forecast what 

 this may mean to your business. Here, also, must center the transporta- 

 tion of this expansive and expanding region. It is beyond the power of 

 man to rob you of this splendid commercial advantage. Since I have 

 seen what your two large flour mills are doing and may do in preparing 

 your chief cereal for man's uses, I am almost led to recant and take back 

 my assault upon wheat growing for your valley. Your chief city already 

 has the air and manners of an emporium. Something has brought you to 

 this prosperous and promising condition; some genius of enterprise, public 

 spirit, and liberality, and devotion to local interests, has been the main- 

 spring. 



I would not be invidious; and yet I think I may, without mentioning 

 all to whom you are indebted, record now and here the name of one man 

 whose memory will live while Stockton lives, and who is a typical man of 

 affairs and progressive ideas. I halt in my address to offer the health and 

 long life to your Mayor, Hon. L. U. Shippee. 



There is everything to encourage your people. Nature has strewn her 

 gifts most bountifully around you. Your magnificent display here in this 

 hall, and at your grounds, shows a development of which you may well be 

 proud; it shows something of the boundless resources of your noble valley, 

 and the almost limitless industrial expansion of which you are capable. 



Mr. President, there is a grand future before you. I see in my prophetic 

 vision your treeless plains covered with perpetual verdure, great forests of 

 golden fruit, and wide-spreading meadows of emerald grasses; beautiful 

 homes surrounded with all the comforts of an advanced civilization; 

 churches, schools, everywhere; a clean, healthy, moral, happy people; self- 

 reliant, self-supporting, self-respecting, God-fearing people. 



I see along your lines of travel and among your homes, charming towns 

 and villages, where all the arts of the architect and the landscape gardener 

 have supplemented the cultivated taste of the people to show that these 

 heaven-sent gifts are worthily bestowed. 



I see this aspiring and ambitious City of Stockton, where your products 

 are now gathered, and where we are now assembled, a large and prosper- 

 ous center of trade, holding to our metropolis the relation that the City of 

 Philadelphia holds to the metropolis of the East. 



A million of people in that future that rises before me will enjoy this fair 

 land of yours, and claim it as their heritage. 



You and I, Mr. President, may not see this in the flesh, but the boy and 

 the girl are before me who will witness this crowning glory of this heaven- 

 blessed land, now all your own. 



