292 BOARD or* AORlCtlLTURK. 



iTesident Stevens: Wc will now have a word of welcome by C. C. 

 Mays, of Fraiiktou. 



C. C. Mays: Mr. I'resident, Ladies and Gentlemen— In this the annual 

 meellug of the State Horticultiiiai Society, it is my pleasure to welcome 

 you liero, and if what 1 may say is not clothed in the most beautiful lau- 

 ;;uage, 1 want you to know that my intentions are good, and that my 

 heart is in the right place, and that it warmly beats a welcome to you 

 one and all. I would only say that which should be said to an audience 

 like this assembled here, the best, the representatives of the most ad- 

 vanced ideas of farming in the country. 



The time has come in our societies in Madison County when we as- 

 semble as we do heie, we do not do it for pleasure's sake nor from a 

 social standpoint alone, but we gather for the purpose of broadening and 

 enriching our minds in the things that will make us better farmers, better 

 stockmen, dairymen, and, in fact, all that the ideal farm comprises. The 

 enlightened faimer of today recognizes the fact that farming is something 

 more than a mere tui'uing of the soil, that it is a science within itself, 

 and that he who would follow it in the future must do it in accordance 

 with scientific principles, and that he who may tread the clods turned by 

 the plowshare may be in all sense a farmer. 



This Society stands for and is but tlie mirror through which we may 

 see and know, as it were, the better and brighter side of him that the 

 world calls farmer; it is but one means of tinding ourselves and knowing 

 our environments. 



There was a time, and you all know it, when the word "farmer" in 

 the social world meant "beneath us," but this haze of prejudice through 

 which the people of the world may have looked is being cleared away, 

 and in the farmer they see one of the most potent factors of the world's 

 progress— that from thp farm comes the purest and best American blood— 

 the best smew and the best and purest American manhood and woman- 

 hood. But time alone has not wrought this cuange; the farmer him- 

 self, the experiences of the past, our schools and colleges, all have been 

 factors in making tlie farmer of today a cosmopolitan. 



The progress of the past, the demands of the present and the future 

 urge us ever to be active and awake to the conditions, if we would keep 

 abreast of the times. If we would succeed in the future as a farmer, if 

 we would develop the science that is ours, we must know better than we 

 evet- knew before, the art of farming, and all that is kindred thereto, 

 and in doing this we can not build alone on the experiences of the past. 

 True, these are helps, but we must have other and broader training than 

 the farm alone. We must look to our agricultural colleges; for from them 

 we get the advanced ideas and the results of the newest and latest 

 experiments. Our State has given 1o us for the benetit of the farmer 

 Purdue University, which is more and more demanding a recognition 

 from the farmers of today, and we as farmers should lend it our aid. 



