jgg ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



farmers of Chester county we look for all that is progressive, for all 

 thai is earnest, for all thai is sincere, for all that is real in the ad- 

 vancing movements of this advancing age. 



True it is we have had a pesl railed the stale, aud that scale is to 

 be fouud upon many of the alleged statesmen in this Commouwealth. 

 Now thai scale needs to be sprayed; these statesmen need to be 

 treated to a shower bath of public opinion, and that spraying and 

 that bath and thai evidence of public opinion, is to come from the 

 farmers of Pennsylvania, and you will tind plenty of them in the 

 county of Chester^ im friends, who own themselves, who listen to 

 no dictation from any alleged superior power. When I look over this 

 great Commonwealth and observe its present condition, I am free 

 to say to you that in Pennsylvania there is no Republican party; 

 it is in the hands of a sequestrator, and has only reached the first 

 stage of having an inventory taken of its assets. There is no Demo 

 cratic party, for it is in the hands of a receiver and they don't know 

 it. There is only one party in Pennsylvania, and that is the party 

 of the people, and a "government ,by the people and for the people 

 shall not perish from this earth," so long as the husbandmen retain 

 their independence in action, in character and in achievement. The 

 world cares nothing for what people say; it is what they do. They 

 point to the fact, to the achievement, to the result, not to the 

 spoken word; not to the wind-work that goes on all over this State. 

 Where you find a man saying what he is going to do, you rarely 

 find that he has done it, so that at last good government stands 

 upon the basis of independent individual action, and I care not what 

 may be said from this platform, we want results, we want achieve- 

 ment, we want some forward, progressive movement that will count 

 for something upon the pages of contemporaneous history. 



Now, my friends, I only desire to say this in conclusion. Do not 

 be a lot of Jeremiahs; do not be a lot of lineal descendants of the 

 prophet of Lamentations. The times were never better than they 

 are to-day because the people were never better. There never was 

 greater prosperity in this Commonwealth than there is at this time. 

 It is always better to look upon the bright side, the hopeful side, 

 the cheery side of things. We are not a mass of rotten grafters in 

 Pennsylvania, but we are a mass of people desirous of bettering our 

 condition. Genius means energy and industry. Knowledge is not 

 a syuonym of laziness and inattention to sanitary details. What 

 we want is to get results. Be cheerful. You are better housed, better 

 fed, better clothed, live longer, have more money and more com- 

 forts than your fathers. We want to move along the car of human 

 progress. That poet — that Robert Burns of America whose lines 

 have reached every heart — has said, I quote from James Whitcomb 

 Rilev: 



