ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME 



HON. A. L. MARTIN, Director of Institutes 



Mr. Cbairman, Fellow-workers, Gentlemen representin*; tlie City in 

 which we are holding our meetings, and the County of Monroe: For 

 sixteen years past, it has been the custom of the Bureau of Farmers' 

 Institutes, in the Department of Agriculture, to hold an annual meet- 

 ing of this character. It has always been the custom in places where 

 we have gone, for certain persons to be selected by the home people 

 to extend to us an address of welcome. I am frank to say that in 

 my sixteen years' experience I can think of no place that we have 

 visited, in which there has been extended to this organization a 

 more hearty and generous and uplifting welcome, tbnn lias been given 

 to us here in Stroudsburg. You have opened to us tbe best in your 

 town, guarded, of course, just a little, in the matter of taking our 

 delegates to places of safety at times, which was very considerate, 

 indeed, and for which we are very thankful. 



Judge Staples, you have mentioned, in your address of welcome, 

 something of the conditions in Monroe county. You claim to be an 

 agricultural county, and properly so; but from the outside of some 

 of these places here, we liardly know whether we are in an agricul- 

 tural county or not. Still, we know that Monroe is an agricultural 

 county. And we know more than that. AVe know that not only do 

 you cultivate the soil, but you look toward the cultivation of the 

 mind and the soul. You are giving close attention to the education, 

 and the development of the better faculties of the child. This is to 

 your credit. And not only has Monroe county the reputation of giv- 

 ing attention to these things, but Nature has here placed natural 

 conditions that exist nowhere else in Pennsylvania. You are prop- 

 erly called "The Switzerland of America," and 1 can say here that 

 among other things that induced these farmers to come to Strouds- 

 burg for their meeting, the beauty of Stroudsburg and its surround- 

 ings at this season of the year, had its part, and as we look at the 

 handwriting of Nature on these mountain sides, and in the beautiful 

 valleys, we will carry with us, when we leave here, memories that 

 will never be forgotten. 



I want to say a few words about some other things. We held in 

 Pennsylvania, — last year, over four hundred of these Farmers' Insti- 

 tutes, with an attendance of something over two hundred and eight 

 thousand people. These institutes were devoted to the discussion of 

 some of the most important subjects now up for solution in the ad- 

 vancement of agriculture. What are these subjects? First, I put 

 soil building. The farmers of Pennsylvania — the farmers of the 

 world have before them the greatest problem of the day in trying to 

 feed their soils so as to increase their productivity and keep them 

 from becoming depleted, and the farms from being added to list of 

 abandoned and worn-out farms. In Penn.sylvania, not so much as in 

 some other states, we have seen this. Her Cerman population is 

 wedded to the soil, and we have here some of the oldest landmarks 



