SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING, 



Improved Live Stock Breeders' Association. 



Convened in Springfield, Missouri, January 6 to 9, 1903. 



(Held Under Auspices of State Board of Agriculture.) 



ABSTRACT OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



Hon. J. E. Melette, Mayor of Springfield. 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen — Allow me to extend to you gentle- 

 men a welcome of the people of this city, a very formal and a very easy 

 and pleasant task I assure you to do. I am not here, however, to extend 

 my remarks or to indulge in any lecture which would give any advice 

 upon farming. I could do so probably, but I think it will be better and 

 less humiliating to me and probably of just as much interest to the farm- 

 ing community at large to form a committee tO' wait on me privately 

 and let me communicate to them my views and my experiences upon the 

 question of farming. Ordinary, plain old-fashioned farming I used to 

 think I knew something about. I had a good deal of experience along 

 that line. Nothing in my career, however, that I can recall to-day will 

 justify me in bragging, especially upon my record in that line, but in the 

 first place, gentlemen, it occurs to me that we are united, we are all inter- 

 ested. Men of the city, men of the country, politicians, lawyers, doctors, 

 churchmen, statesmen, all are alike interested in the great question dealing 

 with the promotion of agriculture. Ruskin, I think it was, stated a great 

 truth and a great fact when he said "To watch the corn grow, the blos- 

 soms bud, to breathe hard over the plowshare and over the spade, to 

 reap, to love, to hope, to pray, these are the things that make men happy," 

 and upon our knowing and our teaching these few things depends the 

 prosperity or adversity of the world. It is an old saying, but true, so 



