280 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SECRETARY'S REPORT. 



BY L. A. GOODMAN, WESTPORT, MO. 



Again, dear friends and members of our State society, we meet to 

 discuss our success and failures ; to meet one another and form new 

 acquaintances; to renew our old and to enthuse new life into our 

 work. 



I congratulate you that we find so many of our fruit men who are 

 able and willing to help along this matter. Nothing succeeds like suc- 

 cess, and all we want to know of any matter here in the west is, that 

 it is going to be successful, and then we are willing to work, and work 

 with a will. We found this the case in our society work. It was hard 

 to convince the fruit growers of the State that we were in earnest and 

 expected to do something. After two years of work we find the case 

 changing, and now people are enquiring of us and seeking to become 

 one of us, instead of being afraid to be called one of our members. 



Our work is growing more and more, and ppreading each year far- 

 ther east. The lump of leaven from the west of the State is extending 

 all over our great State. The only limit to our work and usefulness is 

 the money we have given us to expend in the cause, and it is well for 

 us to lay plans now for the increase of income 



In all the realm of labor or professions there is nothing so fasci- 

 nating as the study of horticulture. There is something so attractive 

 in the work that very few ever give up the study when once well be- 

 gun, and then we see every man who has made his thousands in the 

 busy cities look forward to the time when he can enjoy himself on a 

 farm or in the horticultural field. We have then a glorious and wide 

 spread field open before us, one which needs investigation and study ; 

 one which presents the grandest opportunities for the student to enter; 

 one which is just entering on the threshold of science ; one which has 

 few known laws and many chances for experiment. 



In this grand work, then, we have nothing to lose and everything 

 to gain; so that our greatest trouble in awaking enthusiasm in our 

 State society was to do something so that our people could be satisfied 

 that we are alive and not dead. 



To accomplish this, then, was our first work, and this we did by 

 making our successful show at the World's Fair at New Orleans. Our 



