FORTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 49 



the soil, and then the wildernesK is made to blossom like the rose. ''This 

 audience here tonight." said the speaker, "the rei)resentative farmers 

 throughout the length and breadth of this State, can do more for the 

 boTS and girls in our schoolhouses to give them high ideals of life than 

 any one else. I am an optimist. Today is l>etter than yesterday. The 

 world is growing better. If not, it is a failure, but I don't believe it, 

 and so I am going to move onward and upward with the inspiration 

 to greater effort Avhich comes from looking on the bright side and living 

 for and exi)ecting great things." 



Mr. T. M. Sawyer, editor of the Ludington Kecord-Apfjeal, was next 

 introduced and began by saying that he wanted to ])reach a sermon with- 

 out any preface or stories on the subject of "The Oity Man vs. the 

 Farmer," which he took to mean the relationship of the city man to the 

 rural citizen. Ludington. he said, paid forty per cent of the taxes of 

 Mason county. The Dei)artment of Agriculture at Washington is main- 

 tained at a very large expense in order to teach the man who secures 

 his living from the soil how most profitably and to the best advantage 

 to get it. Any part of the burden of that expense that falls on Mason 

 county as a whole, the city of Ludington bears forty per cent of it. 

 So with the State agricultural school, the maintaining of farmers' in- 

 stitutes, experiment stations, the county normal for the training of teach- 

 ers, etc. This he regarded as an unequal taxation without proper represen- 

 tation or compensation. "As farmers, your trade that should come to 

 this city is much of it diverted in other channels, because of a fancied 

 idea that you can gain a little financially," which is not rendering to 

 Caesar his oavu. But there is still beyond the commercial side of the 

 question another phase, infinitely more important. In all this sad, mad 

 rush for wealth and place and power, men are homesick — longing for 

 home. They seek simplicity, and the country calls them, and they fain 

 would go back to nature and lay their tired heads in her lap. \Yill the 

 spirit of brotherhood prevail? We go this way but once, and Ave do 

 well to help one another while we may, and as we jouniey the road over 

 which we pass but the once, may we go hand in hand. (Applause.) 



Mr. Eowe — One of the hopeful signs of the times horticulturally are 

 the magnificent young men that are today taking up the scientific study 

 of horticulture in our agricultural colleges, not alone in Michigan, but 

 in nearly all the states of the Union. The classes are larger than ever 

 before. We have a splendid class in our own college and I take pleasure 

 in calling on a member of that class to say a few words to us at this 

 time, Mr. Geo. B. Branch, a senior of the m'. A. C. 



Mr. Branch introduced his remarks by telling a little stoiy on Prof. 

 Gunson, which elicited a round of laughter, and then stated that the 

 difficulty with many graduates when they Avent forth Avas that they 

 thought they knew a good deal more than they really did, but when they 

 got out among the hard-headed practical farmers' and horticulturists, 

 that was soon taken out. He was glad to say that there Avas at the col- 

 lege at the present time the largest number of agricultural students ever 

 before in attendance who were here to learn the science of agriculture 

 so as to go out and be farmers of the highest type, with the conscientious 

 desire to help to bring the calling up to AA'here every one can say that 

 he is proud to l>e counted as one of them. He hojied that a much'closer 

 union could be made to exist between the practical farmers and fruit 

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