STATE GRANGE ^S'S 



by a practical farmer, for none other can so fully see and sympathize 

 with such measures proposed and to be presented as will assist this great 

 and all-important interest. 



AGEICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



No general annual report to the State Grange would be complete if 

 it did not call the attention of the delegates to the importance of this, 

 the farmers' school. The State Board of Agriculture, from earnest de- 

 sires and long experience, are striving, as I believe never before, to make 

 this institution meet the true wants of the farmers of the State in sup- 

 plying their sons and daughters with practical and helpful education. 

 During the year several clumges and some additions have been made to 

 the courses of study and methods of procedure, each calculated to keep 

 the College up to the demands of the times. The Granges of Michigan 

 have been foremost in asking that suitable arrangements be made at the 

 College to educate the young women as well as the young men. This 

 request has been granted, and such a department is now a reality. That 

 the members of this body may be fully informed regarding the ladies' 

 department, and other changes that have been made during the year, and 

 to the end that the information thus received may be communiwited to 

 all subordinate Granges of the State, I recommend that a special com- 

 mittee of ladies and gentlemen be appointed to visit the College and 

 make re])ort to this body before the close of this session. Special in- 

 (juiry should be made regarding the short courses provided for the 

 winter months. The farmers of Michigan should have renewed pride 

 in this institution and support it as never before. Without doubt, it 

 gives the best general and special training of any school in the State, for 

 farm life. The short courses, to which allusion was made, are planned 

 along very practical lines, and should be well patronized by all young 

 men who desire to gain through the winter months a kind of information 

 that will prove useful to them the following summer. 



AGRICULTURE. 



This subject is always of deepest interest to those whose profits from 

 tilling the soil are to measure the advantages and opportunities they 

 may enjoy. Agriculture comprises the business of farming in a broad 

 and general way, and, as a whole, it cannot be truthfully said the general 

 depressed conditions that have surrounded this the greatest of all our 

 nation's interests for the past few years have changed for the better. 

 The same dark clouds obscure its prospects, and farmers are forced to 

 closer economy and to live within themselves the more. It is a severe 

 trial for the farmer to reconcile himself to the seeming inevitable, that 

 he must take a new inventory and therein scale down the value of his 

 land and all its belongings fully one-half, and on that basis make a new 

 start with practically his own hands. It is also a discouraging thought 

 to entertain that although tho wealth of the country has, during the 

 last decade, increased in round nnmbors from sixteen to sixty-four bil- 

 lion of dollars, proportionately the share of the agriculturist has de- 

 creased from nearly one-half to less than one-fourth of the whole amounts 

 and this while tli<^ mortgage indebtedness thoreon has considerably in 

 creased and the embarrassment caused bv such indebt(Hlness has been 



