838 ANNUAL REPORT 



plagued with thieves. If ever the time shall come that swords shall be 

 beat into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks, the desert blooming 

 as the rose, with none to molest or make afraid, it will be when each 

 family own a home, grow and eat all the luxuries the land can be made to 

 produce. For then, and not until then, will all incentives to vice be 

 cut off. 



Monopoly will then have run her race in making kings and paupers, 

 and the anomaly of to-day, of big rogues punishing* those of smaller fry, 

 be heard of no more— save as follies of the past. 



But it is for us to say what shall be in the long distant future, whether 

 the desert shall bloom, and none to molest or make afraid, for we have 

 reached a turning point in the nation's destiny, and it is for u« to say 

 shall we go up or shall we go down. And just here let me entreat you^ 

 to ponder well the drift of morals that rule the nation, and having so 

 pondered, sound the alarm, name the evils, brand them as God did Cain, 

 and slay them at next election, if, indeed, the sword is not called out 

 sooner. 



And to practice what I preach, just here I will take a survey of some of 

 the most noted evils that clog progress and foster vice. And first to note 

 is the fostering of the fast hoise, the most enchanting lure and the surest 

 to lead to individual and national ruin known in the history of man. 

 And yet, with all the lessons of ages, with naught but ruin in the tread 

 of the fast horse, at our fairs he is made paramount to all else — all other 

 Interests called in to do him homage. Princely awards are offered to induce 

 him in, and at the closing up are paid, a mere pittance to all else, and that 

 pittance often not paid. 



That the fast horse calls in the rabble I admit, but he gets more than 

 his share of plunder. Plunder I call it, for plunder it is in every sense of 

 the word. The fast horse is the decoy — the object is to get money with- 

 out a substantial equivalent. They lure as the highwayman often lures, 

 for money, with this difference : the highwaymen don't run away with 

 their victim's morals and steady habits. Then, too, what benefit is the 

 fast horse to agriculture, to the arts, the sciences, and the general civiliz- 

 ation of the age '? — why call him in ? Surely to call out a half drunken, 

 brainless rabble, daily for a week at a stretch has any but a civilizing 

 tendency. Yet baser still is the'ample space given the fast horse, whilst 

 all else is jammed into small space, and that space thronged by an idle- 

 headed rabble, to the exclusion of all interchange of ideas, of those who 

 go there to benefit and be benefited by the imparting of useful knowl- 

 edge. The progress of the world is carried on the shoulders of those who 

 probe for and impart useful ideas— the rabble float with currents, and 

 if those currents are evil, their assemblage only gives those currents 

 greater force. Therefore, to have a fair of worth, there should be no 

 lure to call in the rabble. No premiums, every man his own judge, then 

 no frauds to grumble at. Certain the great majority of exliibitors get no 

 premiums, and if they can afford to exhibit without pay, surely those can 



