170 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTUKE. 



CHARLOTTE INSTITUTE. 



This Institute -was held January 9th and 10th, in Sampson's Hall. This 

 commodious hall was well filled at the hour appointed for opening tlic meet- 

 ing, with an audience composed mostly of farmers and their wives. 



Hon. Robert Nixon, of Oneida, who was President of the meeting, made 

 the following opening address : 



Ladies and Gentlemen : — We have meet this evening to talk over the dif- 

 ferent topics mentioned in the programme. And by interchange of thought, 

 we may reasonably expect to be benefited. Last fall when we met to talk over 

 the propriety of having a Farmers' Institute in Charlotte the coming winter, the 

 only hindrance ajipeared to be to get those wise men from the East to come 

 over and assist us. 



Gentlemen of the Agricultural College, we welcome you to Eaton county to 

 assist us in our Institute. Ladies and gentlemen of Eaton County, who have 

 come from your homes through the frost and cold, we welcome you to our In- 

 stitute, to elevate and magnify your high calling. 



We welcome you, citizens and friends of other counties, to this meeting, 

 believing that yon will feel at home with ns and help us in our deliberations, 

 giving us from your experience that which will be beneficial to us all. 



The day is past and gone, we hope forever, in which it was thought that the 

 man who tills the soil must of necessity know nothing but to plow, sow and 

 reaj:), and be a hewer of wood and drawer of water. There is no reason why 

 the son and daughter of the farmer of Michigan may not stand on the high 

 plane of intellect with any other class of citizens. Michigan, our Michigan, 

 in the early days of her legislation, made provisions for the education of her 

 people. We have the Normal School, where young men and women are fitted 

 to go and teach all over the State. AVe have the State University, an institu- 

 tion that we all feel proud of. Last but not least, the pioneer Agricultural 

 College of all this broad land, where we send our young men to be taught the 

 arts and sciences and receive a good liberal education, that will fit them for 

 farming or any other avocation. 



If we take into consideration the facilities the farmer has to-day as com- 

 pared with what he had fifty years ago, we see that considerable advancement 

 has been made, though perhaps not as much as in some other directions. 

 Let us take a glance back for fifty years, when tlie sickle and the cradle cut 

 our grain. When the horse, the ox and the flail were the instruments em- 

 ployed in threshing out the grain. Contrast them with the different machines 

 of the present day for cutting, binding, and leaving good bundles all ready to 

 stand in the shock. Compare the flail, the ox, or the horse with the threshing- 

 machine of to-day, — behold the contrast. See, also, how we are favored in get- 

 ting our produce to market, as compared with the time when many of us had to 

 go 35 or 40 miles to dispose of our grain. Let us be encouraged, and let our 

 motto be, whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. 



Fellow-citizens of Eaton county, from this meeting we expect good results ; 

 it cannot be otherwise. The addresses and essays that are to come before us 

 at this meeting must result in good. For in the interchange of thought, man 

 with man, our ideas are awakened. What one docs not know another perhaps 



