288 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



these factors, taken together, constitute the heaviest burden that 

 the foremost industry of the commonwealth has to bear. That all 

 these untoward circumstances exist is due to the fact that our tillers 

 of the soil have not understood how to apply the best methods to 

 the conditions by which they find themselves surrounded. There 

 is now, however, a general awakening going on — a realization that 

 something is wrong which must be righted before the highest suc- 

 cess is secured — which augurs well for the future. Indeed, the first 

 forward step has been already taken. The procession is forming. 

 The farmers are forming in line. Put your ear to the ground and 

 listen! Do you not hear the advancing tread of the stalwart hosts 

 that are to make the waste places fruitful and transform the wilder- 

 ness into a garden? We see, with clearer vision than ever before, Ihat 

 lack of knowledge of these things concerning which we should be 

 best informed is a most expensive luxury and have resolved to part 

 company with it. It has held us in chains too long, and now "eman- 

 cipation" is the rallying cry. We are emerging from the chrysa- 

 lis state and are begining to see that the world has something for 

 us to do other than to follow in the ruts of the Red River carts and 

 to slavishly imitate methods that answered better in the early days, 

 when it was only necessary to tickle the earth with a harrow and 

 then lean against the fence to see it laugh with the harvest They 

 will not do today, when the fiercest competition ever known has 

 made it clear that useful knowledge and practical intelligence are 

 at the fore, capturing all the best prizes and securing the best 

 results with the fewest failures and the least waste of energy. Opie,^ 

 the celebrated English painter, when asked how he mixed his paints 

 so skillfully, answered, "with brains, sir." He might have been 

 more specific, though, perhaps, at the expense of terseness, had he 

 said " with cultivated brains." That is the way the best farmers 

 are winning now. Cultivated brains and expert knowledge are 

 making a quarter section produce more than a section would yield 

 under the management practiced in territorial days. 



"The world moves." Turn which ever way we will, we see intelli- 

 gence increasing our products, slopping the leaks, enhancing the 

 profits, touching and brightening our homes, bringing comforts to 

 our families and light and sweetness to our lives. The possibilities 

 of forest and prairie will in the future be limited only by intellec- 

 tual, moral and physical attainments. There is every reason to be- 

 lieve that an era of more rapid advancement than was ever dreamed 

 of in the past is opening upon us. Our energies are beginning to 

 be expended upon the lines of broad, practical utility, rather than 

 those of narrow selfishness and questionable amusements. Every 

 forward step made by one farmer helps everybody else, be he 

 farmer, merchant or mechanic. We are being baptized with a spirit 

 of philanthropy, and, pessimists to the contrary, this baptism is 

 having its effect upon our social life and is permeating the whole 

 body politic. The prosperity and advancement of the farmers, and 

 a constantly increasing value of farm products in comparison with 

 the expenses, means general prosperity and good times for us all. 



