THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART XI. 025 



Our great coal trusts — the tin and steel industries and numerous other 

 gigantic enterprises— what do they all mean? They mean that we are 

 living fast. 



Going at a tremenduous pace, and if we would keep abreast of the 

 times we must use every means in our reach to attain the things we are 

 setting out to accomplish.. 



And so we come together today to join our hands and hearts in en- 

 deavoring to unite in perfect harmony the greatest enterprise, the largest 

 enterprise, nie largest combination, the most invulnerable trust that the 

 sun ever shone upon — the American farmer. 



I do not use the word trust here in its technical sense. I do mean that 

 our interests are one, our aims are one, and we must strike to accomplish 

 the same results — that of making the most out of the powers and oppor 

 t unities given us. 



It is not possible for us all to attend an agricultural college. Our posi- 

 tions in life demand that we stay where we are; our conditions necessitate 

 our staying where we are and the necessities of the world demand our 

 every effort as a duty to provide them the wherewith to subsist. It is 

 then that we see the absolute necessity of making the most of what we 

 have at hand to better our condition. The Farmers Institute affords us 

 an opportunity that to get the most out of should be attended, should be 

 participated in, should be taken home and practiced — it is here we get our 

 ideas together and vie with one another in the best methods to be applied, 

 the proper management of what we have in our care and the realization 

 of the fact that we are here for business and not for play. 



In telling a successful retired farmer friend of mine that I had gleaned 

 a few new ideas from the farm papers, said, "Yes, I was always a great 

 hand to read the papers, but I think I got more good from just going to 

 my different neighbors and seeing how they did, learning what they knew, 

 and then going home and profiting by what I had seen and heard, both 

 in their successes and their failures. Just so it is with our Institute. We 

 come here to gain by our neighbors' experiences, and where is there a 

 better place than right here among ourselves to impart this knowledge? 

 But we go farther. We are enabled by the co-operation of the farmers 

 and their trust, or better say, the trust of these men in the 

 farmers — to have among us men who have had the agricultural 

 college training, the experimental training backed up by this 

 great farming country, to give vis the results of their life time 

 of study and research in our Jine6, which we cannot with our limite'd time 

 and means accomplish. They have made it a business to find out by actual 

 experience the best manner of care and the best and cheapest feeds and 

 conditions to make milk, to make beef, and to utilize the products we, by 

 our co-operation with nature produce — to the very best advantage. 



It cost money to find this. It costs time and labor and well can we 

 afford to employ these men and make these experiments and get from 

 them what we could not get from any other source. Not only have we here 

 men who have learned how to feed, but men who have toiled in the field 

 with soils and seeds and secured for us results we hardly thought possible 

 —that of the improvement of our yields of grain and corn and the quality 



