74 Transactions of the 



OPENING ADDRESS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY ON THE FOURTEENTH 

 DAY OF SEPTEMBER, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY. 



By CHARLES F. REED, President. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, and Members of the State Agricultural Society: 



We have come together once more on this the day of California's 

 industrial jubilee, to meet and greet each other with words of congratu- 

 lation and good cheer. We have come once more from the valleys and 

 mountains, from the cities and towns, to meet here as friends and co- 

 workers in the great cause of social and industrial improvement. It 

 has been my good fortune, on many occasions like the present, to 

 address some of you in this same noble hall with words of salutation, 

 and to extend to you, in behalf of the society, the hand oft welcome and 

 good fellowship. Permit me once more to repeat those salutations, and 

 to congratulate you upon the favorable auspices under which California's 

 Annual Fair for eighteen hundred and seventy is ushered in. Never 

 before, since the organization of the society, has it been in so prosperous 

 a condition as to-day. 



Eveiy dollar of indebtedness has been fully discharged, and the 

 financial success of the society is placed beyond a peradventure. The 

 number of active members is greater than at any former period, and the 

 list is gradually increasing from year to year. The growing interest in 

 the annual exhibitions of the society has rendered it necessary to build 

 additional room for the accommodation of exhibitors at the Hall, and 

 many improvements of a permanent character have also been made at 

 the Park. Improvements by a State Agricultural Society like those we 

 have this year been called upon to make are certainly indicative of the 

 agricultural prosperity of the State, and when we reflect that our 

 agriculture is but in its infancy, and that it has been built up upon the 

 decline and decay of another once all-absorbing industry — mining — we 

 may well be proud of its present prosperous and successful condition. 

 But a low short years ago agriculture — legitimate, life-giving, nation- 

 sustaining agriculture — was unknown in California. 



Even California herself was to the balance of the world as a sealed 

 book. Her mountainous regions as an impenetrated wilderness — her 

 broad plains as barren deserts — her bays, lakes, and rivers were unknown 

 to commerce and their waters were undisturbed by man, except as the 

 wild Indian's frail canoe, now and then, in silence lazily and aimlessly 

 wafted its indolent owner upon their bosoms, not disturbing, but rather 



