STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. G9 



OPENING ADDRESS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, SEPTEMBER 

 SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT. 



By CHAS. T. REED, President. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of ihe State Agricultural Society : 



I hoped and confidently expected, when I had the lienor to address 

 you, one year ago, from this same stand, and on an occasion similar to 

 the present, that some other and more competent person would have 

 occupied my position here to-night; hut }'our will, and not mine, has 

 been done; and it becomes my pleasant duty once more to salute you 

 with words of sincere gratification and thankfulness for our State's 

 prosperity in the past, and of cheerful hope and abiding faith in her con- 

 tinued and increased prosperity in the future. 



Since California became one of the members of the great republic — 

 now about eighteen years ago — there never has been a period in which 

 all our material industries have been so universally and substantially 

 prosperous as the present year. Go where you will — among the sturdy 

 yeomanry of our broad plains or fertile valleys, among the hardy 

 miners, high up on the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas, or deep down in the 

 cragged gulches, overhung by those lofty peaks, or, even deeper, in the 

 almost bottomless mining shafts. Go among the toiling mechanics and 

 skilful and painstaking artizans of our towns and cities. Go among 

 each and every class of people in the entire State, and you will find all 

 busily and profitably engaged ; all contented and happy over present 

 individual and collective successes; all buoyant and jubilant with the 

 bright and cheering prospects in the immediate future. 



Our farmers are not only doing well, and laying up a competency for 

 themselves and families, but they are absolutely becoming rich. An 

 abundance of crops and highly remunerative prices are filling their 

 coffers with gold and silver, enabling them to improve and beautify their 

 farms and homes, to build new and commodious dwellings and barns, to 

 purchase and use the most approved labor-saving machinery in the 

 cultivation of their laud and the gathering and saving of their crops; to 

 supply their families with all the necessaries and luxuries enjoyed by 

 older but less favored eommunities. 



As prospers agriculture, the great fountain of all wealth, the great 

 mother of all other occupations and promoter of all civilization, so 

 prospers the towus and cities, the State and the entire people. 



As a matter of State pride, it may be stated that the estimated product 

 of three of our leading industries, for the present year, is twenty million 



