G04 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



advertised, yet it was, all things considered, a success, and laid the foundatiou 

 of more successful ones in the future. One hundred and eight exhibitors made 

 over 900 entries, which drew 8S68 in premiums. The contingent expenses of 

 tlie fair were §330.81 and tlie total receipts of the fair 81,287.03. 



The value of the jiroperty of the association is about §10,000, on which there 

 is an indebtedness of about SI, 200. 



REMAKKS. 



Tlie fair was a new thing to many of our citizens and farmers, and they 

 were quite backward in preparation and attendance. The show of stock was 

 slight, but in fruits of all kinds, vegetables and grain and flowers and plants 

 was made a good display. Fine arts and needlework, pastry and dairy products 

 were well represented, doing credit to our women. A good show of horses upon 

 the track interested many by their speeding qualities. One excellent feature of 

 tlie fair was the annual address by a fellow citizen, lion. Levi Beardsley, which 

 we think worthy of reprint, at least portions of it which we append: 



0. L. WHITNEY, General Supt. 



ADDRESS OF LEYI BEARDSLEY, ESQ. 



Mr. President axd Fellow-Citizens, — Had a prophecy been made 

 twenty-five years ago, that in the autumn of 1878, an agricultural gathering 

 of this character would be witnessed in' the county of Muskegon, those who 

 cared to listen would have received it as a mere vagary of an irresponsible 

 prophet, not only unworthy of honor in his own country but, likewise, 

 unworthy of attention anyichere. 



At that time the entire county was little more or less than a waste and 

 wilderness. The aborigines had so suffered from the blight and decay which 

 ever strike that peculiar ]ieople contemporaneously which civilization, as to 

 make their appearance in this locality, even at that comparatively late period, 

 excepting in small numbers, as rare, as would be their appearance in paint and 

 wampum, on the thoroughfares of our most populous cities. But American 

 enterprise never slumbers, and as oak after oak came crashing down at the 

 magical touch of the ax, the roar of the falling monarchs was but a prelude 

 to the mighty anthem which now makes the air vocal as twenty thousand 

 people ply their vocations around us, changing shade into sunlight ; making 

 barren fields rejoice and by ponderous sinews of machinery converting earth's 

 products from crude and pristine conditions into staples which gravitate 

 toward ready markets as naturally and easily as luxurious fruit gravitates to 

 the bosom of earth when an eager wind snaps the stem that held it to the 

 parent stalk. Those of us who are discontented with the present and believe or 

 tlLink that we believe all matters and things to be awry; that enterprise has 

 been hopelessly paralyzed and progress sternly halted in its onward path by 

 some grim sentinel placed there by untoward events which will hold the fort 

 until we are made captive, should candidly consider the condition of oar 

 county and State now, as compared with each preceding year of their respective 

 histories. AVe should consider this condition comprehensively ; as a whole ; an 

 aggregate, and not to bewail local, individual or insignificant difiiculties which, 

 for the time being, chill great expectations. Viewing the situation tlius, and 

 carefully noting the currents of events, we cannot conclude otherwise than that 

 there is a steady drift toward prosperity, notwithstanding the dead weights 

 riveted to our energies either through carelessness or design, by those who 



