106 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



not do business with him if he were otherwise. Besides this, he is a 

 voter. He is a good dry goods and grocery customer. He keeps a bank 

 account and he represents the highest type of American citizenship. 

 He furnishes an article of diet that is not only a delicacy, but an 

 absolute necessity for the completion of every meal. He provides for 

 the motherless babe the only means of subsistance and saves to the 

 world a precious human life — an immortal soul. He enters the sick 

 chamber and the hospital wards, and with his product, the Elixir 

 of life, he nurses back the emaciated victim of disease who is lingering 

 on the border land of that country from which no traveler ever returns. 

 He is the producer of the only balanced ration for the weak and the 

 strong. He is the one indispensible manufacturer. He is of equal im- 

 portance in the Palace of Kings and the hovel of the poor. His pos- 

 sibilities are limitless. He stands preeminent and alone as a philan- 

 thropist as with daily regularity, he distributes to unnumbered voyag- 

 ers nature's only life preserver, and he is "Only a Dairyman." Only 

 a drummer boy, but in many a historic battle it was through the in- 

 spiration given by his music that urged a disorganized and terror 

 stricken army on to victory that but for him would have suffered ig- 

 nominious defeat. Only a newsboy, and we forget his importance 

 as he hurries hither and thither crying the latest news and leaving at 

 our doorstep, while the world is still asleep, messages from the remotest 

 comer of the earth and making it possible for us at breakfast to get 

 not only the political and financial situation in the new and old world, 

 but the market reports from the commercial centers of the earth. 



Only a clerk, and yet without him the wheels of commerce would 

 stop. On him rests a responsibility no one else can bear. He occupies 

 a position no one else can fill. He is the connecting link between labor 

 and capital. It is he that oils the machinery and applies the steam 

 that moves the great engine of commerce and transports the necessities 

 and the luxuries of life from the few to the many. 



Only a street car conductor, and yet he has in his charge thousands 

 of precious lives every day, and as the great seething mass of humanity 

 in the congested city go to and fro from home to business, and from 

 business to home, he delivers them safely to their destination and as 

 he crowds back and forth from front to rear, and from rear to front, 

 collecting nickels and ringing the bell that announces another pas- 

 senger, his eager eye is ever alert to dangers that surroimd. and with 

 tender care he helps on and off the unprotected child and the aged that 

 are infirm, and his only reward (aside from the consciousness of doing 

 his duty) an occasional, thank you, and a dollar and seventy-five cents 

 a day. 



