FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 313 



The recreant city citizen is the average citizen ; the inspiration has not been 

 hroad enough to touch the pojiuiar heart, and local societies hmguish for the 

 hick of the sympathy of those who in the aggregate will receive far the greatest 

 benefit from the building up of this business. We say business, and mean busi- 

 iiess, for agriculture is soon to be I he business of this valley, and let the develop- 

 ments of the next twenty years be but proportionate to those of the past five 

 years, and it will prove a grander business than can the most sanguine to-day 

 anticipate. 



Oakland county has not one-quarter the need to develop farming that we 

 have, and less than one-quarter the population that lies in the immediate 

 vicinities of the Saginaws and Bay Citv, still the fair receipts were greater last 

 year than the combined receipts of both our fairs, and this society made a 

 profit of near one thousand dollars, -while our whole receipts show about that 

 much. There is no system to a scold, but I hope you see the point. 



FORENOON SESSION. 



Hon. Geo. Lewis, of Bay City, read a paper on the "Necessity of Develop- 

 ing our Agricultural Resources," of which we have not the manuscript. 



Mr. Bradford, of Williams township, said I consider the pine lands mixed 

 with hard wood among the best lands in our State. They have a rich clay sub- 

 soil mixed with lime and sand. Most of it requires underdraining and thor- 

 ough farming, but when properly managed is more productive than most of 

 the land in the southern part of the State. This I know from experience, as I 

 have farmed on both. 



Prof. K. C. Carpenter gave the following lecture on 



" TKANSPORTATIOX OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS." 



Despite all that has been said to the contrary, the stubborn fact remains that 

 producer and consumer are separated by a greater or less distance. Whatever 

 is produced muse be transported before it can be consumed, is a truth as uni- 

 versal in practical life as are the axioms in mathematics. The theory, that the 

 workshop, the factory and the farm, could exist side by side and dispense with 

 costly transportation, may at some future time be realized, but under the ex- 

 isting condition of things, such an arrangement is financially impossible — and 

 in nearly every case it is tried, proves a practical failure. 



Transportation is an effort, often a costly one, and as such, it is as much en- 

 titled to pay as any effort of the produce. Transportation in fact must be 

 paid for either by consumer or producer. If the principles of free trade 

 are untrammeled in their action, the cost of transportation is added to the 

 cost of production, and the whole is paid by the consumer. Perhaps it is always 

 true that the consumer pays the average cost of transportation when purchas- 

 ing the articles produced, but the average cost of transportation is in nearly 

 every case less or greater than the cost of transportation from any given 

 place. The result is invariably found to be tiiat so far as the producers 

 of agricultural products are concerned, the })rice realized is greater as the cost 

 of transportation is less. A sweeping and universal reduction of the cost of 

 transportation would probably be followed by a corresponding reduction in 



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