154 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



THE WOMEN'S CONGRESS. 



On the afternoons of Tuesday and Wednesday, special sections for 

 the women were held. Mrs. E. J. Cook of Owosso, presided and the 

 following papers were presented: 



WHAT DO WE WORK FOR? 



BY MISS JENNIE BUELL, ANN ARBOR. 



If one above another has the rijjht to speak with authority of work 

 it is our president, Theodore Roosevelt, and he has by his own words 

 and works made the strenuous life a synonym for noble living. Of the 

 results he says: "If your heart is in what you have to do, no matter 

 how small the undertaking, the greater things are sure to come to you 

 and in rich reward." Emerson voiced the same sentiment: "If you 

 love or serve, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape the 

 remuneration." And again our Michigan farmer poet, Hathaway, 

 said; "Do thou thy work, and trust thou God's decree, that as thy 

 work thy recompense shall be." 



This thought so variously expressed by these three great men, had 

 a striking illustration in the early experience of that other great man^ 

 of th^ colored race, Booker T. Washington, whose college examina- 

 tion, as he says, consisted in sweeping and dusting a room. 



This is what Elbert Hubbard would call "a man who could carry a 

 message to Garcia." Mr. Hubbard's pen seldom stops short of the 

 quick of his subject and he makes this instance the basis of some of the 

 most incisive sentences he has ever written: "It is not book learning 

 young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stififening of 

 the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act 

 promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing — "Carry a mes- 

 sage to Garcia." General Garcia is dead now, but there are other 

 Garcias. 



No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many 

 hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the 

 imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwillingness to con- 

 centrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inatten- 

 tion, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule." 



This willingness to do mediocre work, or even worse, this want of 

 dissatisfaction with it when poorly done is a poison that is not con- 

 fined to the veins of the dullard and the ignorant. It is so widespread 

 and insidious that last fall at the opening of the Normal College, 

 President Jones asked the 1,000 students in attendance to take as 



