NOTHING NEW. 97 



This preservation of the old farm need not hinder the increase 

 of the number of towns. There are thousands of acres of land 

 yet in this State, enough of these acres in this county, which 

 are now comparatively unproductive. These can be populated, 

 and the farmers will lose nothing thereby. They will rather 

 gain. 



Here is the town within whose limits we are to-day assem- 

 bled ; it is not perhaps on the map of the State, but it numbers 

 more than five thousand souls. Fifteen years ago it had no 

 name ; it was hardly begun. Three or four men came out here, 

 and walked over this territory, where nothing but pine trees 

 and stunted oak trees were growing, where cows could be past- 

 ured for sixteen dollars a season ; and they said let us build 

 here a town ; let us make a place where the crowded residents 

 of the stifled lanes and alleys of the city can have homes, where 

 they can breathe the pure air, scented only with the fragrance 

 of green grass and the wild forest flowers. Some of us know 

 what opposition they encountered. We can remember and 

 recall how the " conservative " element of the ancient town 

 adjoining banded itself together to resist the establishment of 

 the town of Hyde Park. 



But the town was established, and the men, who, shut up in 

 the city, sighed for the country, with which they had been 

 familiar in their youth, came hither and built their houses and 

 brought their families. I have no doubt that each man will tell 

 you that his first motive for coming was to have a bit of land, 

 a sort of farm with which to solace himself. And it was not 

 the farmers who opposed the building of this town. It was 

 rather those who, while they might have been large land own- 

 ers, hesitated about helping the breaking up of the local centres 

 of business, which they foresaw must inevitably follow. 



And yet, not alone by keeping alive these unions and friend- 

 ships can our farmers prosper. 



It is to the man who works that success comes, in any voca- 

 tion. And I see before me many men, the secret of whose 

 success in amassing fortunes is a matter of mystery to some of 

 their fellows, but which is no mystery to those who know how 

 untiring has been their industry ; how adventuresome has been 

 their labor; how, in the new, and, before then, untrodden des- 

 erts of the western world, they have labored to construct the 



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