358 FARMEES' INSTITUTES. 



PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS, BY HON. S. R. BILLINGS. 



• 



Ladies' and Gentlemen — Perhaps it would not be out of place for me 

 to ask our city cousins for a sketch of the bright and joyous side of farm 

 life, such as painted by the artist and sung by the poet. We see the 

 picture and hear the music. 



A beautiful landscape, a comely house and barn, windmill near pumping 

 water for the cattle feeding on the sloping hill. Shade trees, here and 

 there, and fruit trees all around. Fields of waving grain. Meadows of 

 sweet scented clover. Labor saving machines are carrying whistling drivers, 

 drawn by blooded horses. Yes, we see the pets of the pen, pasture and stall, 

 lambs capering like children at play, and colts testing their speed, as if for 

 the coming races. 



And there is the well dressed farmer with his wife and children seated in 

 a fine carriage behind his prancing bays. 



With this picture before us, who would not be a farmer, a farmer's boy or 

 a farmer's girl. Who would not sing of merry harvest time. 



Had I a dozen active boys to guide in life's career, 

 I'd have them all be farmers true, as sure as I am here. 

 Had I a dozen pretty girls, as fair as summer's morn, 

 I'd marry them all to farmers' boys, as sure as I am born. 



We will draw the curtain on this picture, and look over on the other side, 

 where the majority of the farmers live, where there is less poetry and 

 more hard work, and not such a longing to have the boys and girls stick to 

 the farm. 



We see an average farm of eighty acres, it looks passing well as a land- 

 scape picture, but there is a shadow over the fields, house and barn, and that 

 shadow is a mortgage, part of the purchase price. The occupants are labor- 

 ing with heroic zeal to keep the " wolf from the door," to pay taxes, pay 

 interest and raise the mortgage, and the while, clothe and educate their 

 children in keeping with the age in which they live. 



Take away the picture of the artist and song of the poet, and look at the 

 warfare waged by these earnest workers for bread and home. No baby's 

 hand or kid glove labor will avail them. They must fight if they would 

 win. Enemies are on every hand, seen and unseen, in the earth and on the 

 earth. 



The worm family which no man can number, challenges them to mortal 

 combat, and disputes their right to the products of earth. They put in an 

 early claim to the growing grain. They lay seige to the root, to the stalk, 

 to the blossom and the kernel. They capture the currants and the cabbage. 

 They destroy the plums, the cherries and the apples. Slugs are in the roses 

 and bugs on the grapes and potatoes. As old enemies are vanquished new 

 ones take their places, with new methods of destruction. 



The farmer must have skill to fight these ravaging hordes or they will 

 take his bread and leave him without a place he can call his own. But we 

 have said enough to show that farmers must have knowledge if they would 

 succeed. The time has gone by when, according to the old saying, "any- 

 body can be a farmer." Mere thoughtless work, expenditure of mere muscular 

 energy, uninspired and unvitalized by thought, study, mental discipline, 



