98 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



falls athwart one threshold darkens many doors. The ideal of every 

 statesman is a nation of happy homes. 



We may not re-arrange life's roadway to suit the opinions we had 

 Yesterday, nor shape it in accordance with the hope we have for To- 

 morrow. We must deal with it as it is Today. This is the challenge all 

 along the Road to Tomorrow. The answer is that each must be made 

 to serve all. No more must it be each for himself and the Devil take 

 the hindmost. The call of the hour is for each to care for every other 

 one and for all to take the hindmost. 



The isolation of the farmhouse is relieved as it comes to share 

 commercial privilege and obligation. The factory finds its place when 

 it gives labor to many and the products of labor to many more. 



Distribution is only worth while as it is agent of the millions, not 

 merely feeder for the few. Except the schoolhouse train for public 

 service, it has no right to state support. Except the church heal and 

 help, it has no warrant for existence. Government means not the old 

 order — if that be the order of spoil and steal, under form of law or 

 without— but government means now — must mean the permitting to 

 every man a chance — so far as law and honest wage and aggressive 

 brotherhood may say, an equal chance. 



As we use this day, this Road to Tomorrow, do we determine the 

 days that are to be. Here we may cultivate the patriotism that means 

 the common good. Here may we find that our interests are all woven 

 into one ; and that as commerce thrives, as manufacture plies its skillful 

 hands, as labor is employed, as capital casts its bread upon the waters 

 to find it after many days, so year by year mth accelerating swiftness 

 comes accumulating upon our State and upon all it bears or adopts, a 

 finer life, a literature wider spread, the works of science and philosophy 

 in the shepherd's hands, the canal boy's dream realized in a throne 

 founded upon the suffrages and in the hearts of a free people. In 

 olden days there was race from Marathon and games under the shadow 

 of Olympus. But with every busy citizen of the State are our Olympian 

 games — farmer, physician, engineer, merchant, lawyer, journalist, 

 teacher, preacher. The races we run are with the head and not the 

 feet. The wrestling matches are not of human sinews but of the forces 

 of nature, grappling under the direction of human skill, with the fibres 

 of the field, with the inertia of ores, with wood and stone, not to fling 

 them to the earth, but to raise and train a million hand-servants of use- 

 fulness and luxury ; and the prize is not a fading olive wreath, but that 

 perfection of blessing, that dream of all other lands and lots — the Amer- 

 ican home. 



On the Road to Tomorrow let us make right selection. To find out 



