No. 7. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 265 



has advanced the cause of country education. I tell you, I can go 

 down on my knees to the Farmers' Institute of Pennsylvania for 

 what it has done for the people of the State. It has brought the 

 farmer into touch with his fellow men, and that is what every man 

 needs. I have travelled all over this country, and I tell you, what 

 I am, I owe to my fellow men. He needs to get out and rub elbows 

 with other men, and get their ideas and their methods; if you live 

 like a hermit in your cell, you become narrower and narrower, until 

 at last you lap over, so narrow you get. You want to get out, and 

 get in touch with other men, and this is what the Farmers' Institute 

 has brought about for Pennsylvania. 



OVERCROWDED HALLS AND PRECAUTIONS FOR SAFETY 



OF THE AUDIENCE. 



Bt J. 11. Pkachky, Belleville, Pa. 



Mr. Chairman, and Friends of Agriculture: We all know what 

 it is to have these overcrowded halls, and these overheated halls, 

 and these unheated halls, and if you speak to the people about it, 

 they will tell you it is the best they can do; that they can't over- 

 come these things; but, I tell you my friends, that it is time that we 

 county chairmen, and committees, and institute lecturers do some- 

 thing in regard to these rooms, and these halls, and I tell you the 

 time is here when we can demand something better than we have 

 had. When I think of the Iroquois theatre, and of the Boyertowu 

 theatre, of the Carrollton school, I have more cause to shudder when 

 I think of the halls in which our institutes are often held. When I 

 talk to my people at home about these halls, they say "I think you 

 had better stay at home, because you are safer at home than in these 

 halls." When I think of these things, and then think that no later 

 than last spring we were asked to hold our meeting in a little hall 

 not large enough for the people, while next door to it was a large 

 church that we could not have for a Farmers' Institute, I think it 

 is time to say something. I think that no brick or stone and mortar 

 is too good for a Farmers' Institute, and if we cannot have these 

 places, then it is the duty of the Institute managers to take the In- 

 stitute to some place where there is a hall fit to hold the people who 

 come here. 



Then we got somewhere else where they took us to the Grange 

 hall; that was a small place at the top of a stairs, and when I looked 

 up at the ceiling, I saw no hole, nothing arranged for ventilation, 

 and I could simply see the people dying up there for want of pure, 

 fresh air. Then the stairs — well two men like Prof. Watts could 

 possibly get down that stairs at the same time in case of fire, but 

 two men like Dr. Detrich, never. I tell you, these things are things 

 to think of. What is the remedy? Well, I have just told you the 

 remedy. I believe that the experimental stage of the Farmers' In- 

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