but they are now, as they ever have been, ready and anxious to put the 

 society in a position the most effectually to serve the best interests of 

 agriculture in all its branches, and to lend a helping hand to all other 

 industries in the State. 



And now that the society is in condition, with the assistance above 

 asked, to be rendered comparatively free from the necessity of catering 

 to the public taste, whether good or bad, for the purpose of accom- 

 plishing a pecuniary end, it is hoped that that assistance will be cheer- 

 fully granted. 



The Board would also extend to the representatives of every industry 

 in the State a hearty invitation to come forward and give them an 

 earnest and efficient support, and on their part they will promise equal 

 consideration to all. Let every one bring forward for exhibition at our 

 annual fairs samples of the products of whatever industry he may be 

 engaged in, and he may rest assured that he will receive, at the hands 

 of the officers of the society, a hearty welcome, and his exhibition that 

 degree of attention and consideration its merits may deserve. It has 

 been too much the custom of our people to come to our fairs empty- 

 handed, preferring the leisure and freedom of a visitor to the care and 

 trouble of an exhibitor. To this thoughtless and unwarrantable custom 

 among the industrial classes must be attributed, more than to any bad 

 management on the part of officers, the lack of that general interest so 

 necessary to render these exhibitions of that value to the State which a 

 different course might and ought to make them. 



To this custom, more than to any other cause, must also be attributed 

 the reason why the agricultural fairs throughout the country, as well as 

 in this State, have for years back been leaning too much to exhibitions 

 of stock, and trials of speed on the race course, rather than to the more 

 useful and more really interesting general exhibition of the productions 

 of all the industries. With the people, more than with the managers of 

 these institutions, rest the responsibilities of the past, and with them 

 also will rest the changes for the better in the future. If such changes 

 are desirable, the present period in the history of our State is most aus- 

 picious for their inauguration. 



There probably has never been a time since the organization of our 

 State Society, when so many circumstances combined to render its op- 

 portunities for benefiting the commonwealth so numerous and conspic- 

 uous as at present. The watchword of California to-day is the rapid 

 and healthy development of those vast and varied resources which her 

 own citizens have long known she possessed, but the existence of which 

 the outside world are but just beginning to realize. The fact that Cali- 

 fornia was introduced to the world through the discovery of her gold 

 mines, and the striking contrast between her climate and seasons and 

 those of the countries from which her first settlers came, for a long time 

 blinded even her own people as to the value of her agricultural and 

 other industrial resources, aside from mining. To correct these first 

 impressions and convince our own citizens of the value and importance 

 of those resources, has furnished a constant field for the labors of the 

 society in the past. As much, and perhaps more has been accomplished 

 by correspondence, by the collection, publication and distribution of 

 facts and statistics, by urging the introduction and prosecution of new 

 and varied industries, by calling attention to the superior profits to be 

 realized by the production of one article or set of articles over another, 

 than by the holding of annual fairs. 



The publication and distribution of the volumes containing the trans- 



