206 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



and whom you have all heard, and who is abundantly able to entertain 

 an audience upon any subject upoa which he may speak. I refer to 

 Ex-Senator Harris, formerly of the State of Kansas, who was 

 unable to attend this meeting. 



What I shall say will be somewhat at random; I have made no 

 definite preparations. I come then as a volunteer; and while on the 

 subject of volunteers, I remember a story that I heard sometime ago 

 of a revolution that occurred in one of those little republics oft" the 

 southern coast of the country; and you know that those revolutions 

 in Spanish South America occur almost with every change of the moon ; 

 and in consequence of those revolutions, the president of the United 

 States oftentimes has considerable embarrassment in his application of 

 the Monroe Doctrine. At this particular revolution the president of 

 the republic was very much in danger of being overthrown ; and the 

 commanding officer of the government forces was surrounded by in- 

 surgents and likely to be captured. He sent an urgent telegram to the 

 capitol for reinforcements, and after a delay of what seemed to him 

 an unusual length of time, he received in reply from the commanding 

 officer at the capitol this telegram: "I have this day sent you i8o 

 volunteers by steamer Rio Janeiro. Please return the ropes with which 

 they are tied." And so, as a volunteer, I come with a feeling some- 

 what akin to that of those volunteers who had been sent to the front 

 to relieve the commanding officer besieged by the insurgents. 



It affords me a pleasure, in a sense, to speak in Columbia. For 

 eight or ten years, at an earlier period, 1 was a member of the Board 

 of Agriculture of Missouri. I was a member of the State Board of 

 Agriculture at the time that your eminent Professor Waters was a 

 student, and he attended practically all the meetings of that State Board 

 here in Columbia. We remember the excellent services he rendered to 

 the State Board at that time and we are all proud of him — proud that 

 he rose from the position of an efficient student to one of the recognized 

 agricultural scientists of America. We think that the University of Mis- 

 souri is fortunate in the possession of such a scientific agriculturist, and I 

 want to say one word on that point — that at that lime and at a prior 

 time the fanners of Missouri, the farmers of the country generally, 

 did not recognize the value of these agricultural schools to the farming 

 and live stock industry of the country. I can remember, as a boy, hearing 

 farmers — and successful farmers and successful stock growers — sneer 

 at your agricultural farming, "book farming," scientific farming; but 

 I am happy to say that has changed. These institutions have been 

 so abundantly equipped with men and means and their work has come 

 up from what in its infancy was necessarily crude, to such an excellent 



