ADDRESS. 



To speak of the importance of agriculture would be 

 as superfluous as to speak of the importance of the 

 atmosphere. Man cannot live without air or without 

 food, and the pursuit that furnishes the latter needs no 

 rhetoric to demonstrate its value. Nor would it be much 

 less futile to dilate upon the importance of the mechanic 

 arts ; for that which is obvious needs no proof. Were 

 I speaking to barbarians whose inventive faculties had 

 produced nothing but rude instruments of war and 

 of the chase, and the simplest of domestic utensils, it 

 would be well to show them that better works than theirs 

 can be fabricated by the skill of man. But I address an 

 audience acquainted not only with the common imple- 

 ments of husbandry and the arts, but familiar with those 

 wonderful inventions of genius that seem more like 

 revelations of omniscience than productions of the finite 

 facultiespf man. To auditors who daily behold the steam 

 engine, the printing press, the electric telegraph, the cotton 

 gin, the power loom, the sewing machine, the reaper and 

 mower, the various smelting and metal works, the flour- 

 ing, cotton, woollen and paper mills, the elevator, the hy- 

 draulic press, the canal and railroad, the sailing vessel 

 and steamship, the photograph and lithograph, the 

 watch, the compass, the level, the sextant, the telescope 

 and microscope, the thermometer and barometer who 

 are surrounded by the triumphs of architecture and the 

 ever varying *nd wonderful productions of science and 

 the arts before such an audience, why should I dwell 

 upon the importance of mechanical science and skill? 

 Every one of you not only knows their importance but 



