THE DEBT WE OWE THE PIONEERS. 503 



in public business. Many consider the social features of the Farmers' Club 

 its strongest point. Composed as it usually is of families living near enough 

 to be tolerably well acquainted with each other, with the chance for social 

 chat and friendly intercourse, with music as a part of the exercises, and last, 

 though by no means least, the bountiful meal provided for the occasion, one 

 can hardly help admitting that the social feature of the Farmers' Club is a 

 very pleasant part of the arrangement. 



I will only add in conclusion, my plea to you as brother farmers to organize, 

 if not the Farmers' Club, then some other organization having the same great 

 object in view, viz: the advancement of the interests, the education of the 

 members, and the general welfare of the American farmer. 



THE DEBT WE OWE THE PIONEERS. 



BY MISS MOLLIE CAERUTHEES. 

 [Read at the Bancroft Institute.] 



As I have been considering the advantages of this Institute to the people 

 of our county, I have been constantly reminded of the work by which an 

 entertainment, such as this bids fair to be, has been made possible. 



We are proud of Michigan, proud of her agriculture, of her rapid advance- 

 ment and of her financial standing; but do we not ascribe to later circum- 

 stances too much of the credit of our State's present standard, and almost 

 forget the first rough work that paved the way for all the rest? We too easily 

 fall into the habit of looking only at results and ignoring the slow beginning 

 necessary to all great achievements. 



The present excellence of the industry under discussion is quite as much 

 due to the men who split rails for the first fences as to those who have 

 invented the best methods for growing ornamental hedges. 



The young farmer of to-day takes the farm which he is fortunate enough 

 to receive by gift or purchase, but he is not so very glad to get it, nor does 

 he think life on that farm so very desirable, but seldom does he think of the 

 dead and gone farmer who cleared his farm, or of the enormous amount of 

 hard labor he expended upon it. Why, it has been estimated that it takes a 

 working life-time to get a farm into a first-class state of cultivation. 



What can we know of the lives of those dwellers in the forest primeval? 

 How can the college boy of to-day understand what it was to fell oak timber 

 day after day, of long cold winters, and all the time think longingly of the 

 schools back in "York State." Many a bright young man gave up a dream 

 of Harvard or Yale and went on a new farm in Michigan, there to spend the 

 best years of his life making the Agricultural College and the University 

 possible for other young men. 



And the pioneer mothers. We ought to reverence them, for the light of 

 their tallow dips is shining brightly down through the years, and the good they 

 have done lives after them. The hand that forty years ago rocked a cradle on 

 the Western frontier, is to-day plainly visible in Congress and our Legisla- 

 tures. The mother of Garfield only represents a type to which hundreds of 

 Michigan's pioneer women belonged. 



