416 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



general thing she has no rainy days or Sundays, and you can promote your real 

 interests in no other way better than to indulge her tastes about tlie homestead 

 by keejiing things neat and orderly, and allowing her to exercise her own judg- 

 ment about the household expenditures. Do not leave her to do her own work 

 and then part of yours by gathering the fuel, feeding the hogs, milking the 

 eows, and building the fires in the morning. Do not get on a liberal streak 

 and give her a quarter of a dollar, and then wonder for the next six months 

 how oil earth she spent it. In short, so conduct yourselves as to make your 

 homes cheerful, comfortable, and pleasant for the family, and then home 

 influences, associations, and memories will be strong supports for your children 

 when they are separated from the family circle. Do not think your wife and 

 daughters are "stuck-up" because they can tell the difference between the 

 smell of a hog-pen and a bed of roses, and prefer the latter instead of the for- 

 mer in the front-door yard. In short, recognize the fact that cleanliness is 

 next to godliness, and instead of spending your Saturday afternoons lounging 

 about some village saloon drinking whisky and peddling scandal, clear up the 

 grounds about your house so as to make them inviting and attractive. 



Passing from this, consider for a moment the vast acreage of our rich, new, 

 and beautiful territories, lying in latitudes where the climate is healthful and 

 salubrious, and fee simple titles arc given by the government to the actual set- 

 tler under our homestead laws at a mere nominal price, with superior natural 

 facilities for the transportation of produce to market by our numerous inland 

 lakes and rivers, and the railroads that are sure to be built in the track of 

 every new settlement, bringing them into commercial connection with the great 

 centres of business, and then estimate if you can the agricultural products of 

 this country in the next fifty years. Note the progress we have made in the 

 last quarter of a century in the quantity and quality of our products, and the 

 improvements in all the implements by which the labor of the farmer is sup- 

 plied. Mark the vast change in the public sentiment in respect to the respect- 

 ability and advantages of your calling ; consider its safety from hazards, its 

 certainty of sujiport, its glorious independence of public fashion or caprice, and 

 its liealthfulness to mind and body. Witness now the institutions of learning 

 scattered all over the land giving instructions to young men, and specially 

 adapted to qualifying them for practical, successful farmers, thus demon- 

 strating that we have made vast progress. It is now held that a thorough, sys- 

 tematic education is as imj)ortant to the agriculturalists as to any other trade 

 or profession. 



Then with these advantages already secured, with our vast territories with 

 their fresh and unbroken soils, with the rapid emigration from the old world 

 seeking homes where the price of lands are within the reach of all, and feeling 

 the dignity of their advanced condition in life as free men and owners of the 

 soil tliey cultivate, making themselves homes, rearing up their families and 

 extending their possessions, — who can comprehend the magnitude of this inter- 

 est at the next centennial should our glorious free republic remain unimpaired? 



In this connection let us briefly consider the influences of agricultural employ- 

 ment in developing and strengthening that love of liberty without which no 

 free government can long exist. The history of the past demonstrates the fact 

 that the concessions that have been gained for liberty and freedom have been 

 obtained through the influence of the agricultural classes. This is the uniform 

 history of all governments the world over. The calling naturally begets a love 

 of independence and self-reliance, and a hatred of oppression, without which 



