202 Transactions op the 



laudable department of human effort, is certain to share. "As the farmer 

 thrives so the whole world lives." 



These annual gatherings of the great multitude of our culturists, each 

 laden with the year's experience in his own particular sphere, ready to 

 cast it into the lap of all the others, strikingly remind us of those good 

 old times when they " had all things in common." They literally enable 

 each of an hundred men to learn all that the others know of experi- 

 ments tried and theories demonstrated; which knowledge, thus diffused, 

 constitutes a system of practical education second to none ever instituted 

 for the instruction of man. 



In this gathering, also, the various departments present the choicest 

 specimens of their purest bloods — an exhibition of which any State or 

 nation might be justly proud; horses, such as well might cause a monarch 

 to exclaim, "My kingdom for a horse" like this; bulls ruore noble than 

 those of Baslian; cows richer than those that Avent lowing with the ark 

 of God from Ekron to Beth-Shemeth; sheep of finer fleece than the vales 

 of Cashmere ever grew; and machines such as the world never saw 

 before. 



Machines have been recently invented and manufactured in this State, 

 each of which, with only three men and a team, is capable of cutting, 

 thrashing, cleaning, and sacking thirty acres of wheat per day that will 

 yield forty bushels per acre. 



And such machines are needed in a country where a single proprietor 

 has a single wheat field containing sixty thousand acres. Twenty-five 

 square miles in a single patch of grain! Why, this man alone would 

 need half a score of these machines, and even then it would take him 

 two solid months to gather his harvest. 



But how did he put in such a crop? With his gang ploAvs and chisel 

 cultivators, to be sure! By old-fashioned means, had he set ten teams at 

 work, and thus put in twenty acres per day, it would have taken him 

 two and a half years to do his seeding; and by the corresponding means 

 of harvest — the cradle, the rake, and the band — the same ten men would 

 have been more than five years harvesting it. 



The manufacture and use of the best labor-saving machines are abso- 

 lutely necessary to successful farming on a large scale. 



We, the producers of this State, have not met here to canvass political 

 issues or discuss theological science — to unravel the vexed question of 

 international immigration, or to inveigh against the squandering of our 

 public domain — to theorize upon human equality or contemplate the 

 glories of annexing the whole continent to our nation; hence it is not in 

 place — would be impertinent — for me to occupy your time with adroitly 

 framed ai'guments in favor of or against a hard money or a paper cur- 

 rency. These things might tickle the fancy of bankers and brokers, and 

 inspire enthusiasts with visions of a country made rich in specie by a 

 liberal use of greenbacks; but it would be no more in place than a Coro- 

 ner's jury in a ball room, or the performance of an opera in a Quaker 

 meeting. 



As we entertain errors we multiply hazards; and as we correct them, 

 we multiply the means of success. And yet errors, radical errors, are 

 common among us, very. One of these is that the railroad communica- 

 tions in a country interfere with one of the prominent interests of our 

 society — stock raising. Now this is by no means true — they actually 

 facilitate it, and the philosophy of this apparent paradox is this: vast 

 quantities of fertile and easily cultivated land are so remote from market 

 that when transportation depends upon team wagons, the cost of freight 



