154 State Horticultural Society. 



laborers from sister states and territories; for you and your predecessors 

 . are and have been the unpaid agents though whose wisdom and energy, 

 and patience, and sacrifices one of the greatest and best industries of our 

 C'.)mmonwealth has been built up. 



This is a wonderful age in which we live — wonderful on account of 

 the stupendous progress that has been made in all departments of thought 

 and action ; marvelous on account of the rapid improvements in all trades 

 and professions. Be it said to the undying honor of the pioneers of 

 horticulture in Missouri, living and dead, that they were not left behind 

 in this onward march. They were not asleep when others were awake. 

 They were not indifferent when others were electric. They were not 

 standing when others were stampeding. Not willing to be left in the 

 rear, covered by the dust of oblivion from the wheels of the general 

 progress, they forged forward to the very front with their investigations 

 and discoveries, trampling beneath their feet all obstacles and difficulties, 

 and planted their ensigns of victory along the firing line. And as they 

 made their triumphal march they were beautiful as an army with banners. 

 It is the achievements of those grand men, made under dark and dis- 

 couraging circumstances, that have put us in possession of the brilliant 

 potentialities of the present hour. 



Be it said also to the credit of you horticulturists of the present gen- 

 eration that you are the worthy sons of your noble sires. Filled with 

 their spirit imbued with wisdom, and fired by their zeal and success, you 

 have wrapped about you their fallen mantels, and are walking in the light 

 which thev discovered. With brave hearts and skillful hands you are 

 mightily pushing forward the work which they so nobly began. You go 

 ranging abroad in hitherto unexplored regions of plant life seeking the 

 goodly pearls of horticultural truth, and when you have found them you 

 sound the trumpet, call us together, and give them to us freely without 

 money and without price. It is your object to search out the highest 

 wisdom and adopt the best methods of doing things, for your own sakes, 

 and not only so, but so to instruct and enthuse the fruit growers of the 

 land as that they shall be able to produce plenty of choice fruit for all 

 our own people at a fair price, and to break into the great. markets of the 

 distant Orient to feed the hungry millions with the fragments that re- 

 main after our own people have eaten and are full. It is for these reasons 

 that we meet you and greet you. 



I cannot forbear to mention that it is the work of Secretary Goodman, 

 Col. Evans, W. G. Gano and others, long time officers of your Society, 

 that have made it what it is. Years ago they took hold of its work when 

 it was but a nucleus of its present self. Through their unselfish devotion 



