STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 79 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 



Prof. V. R. Gardner. 



Mr. President, Girls and Boys: 



. I suppose all of you boys and girls have in mind some day to 

 be famous. I doubt if there is one of you but hopes to be a 

 big man or a big woman some day. Some of you perhaps are 

 hoping to be big lawyers. Some of you are hoping to be big 

 business men, and handle some of the big business interests of 

 the state. There may be some here who want to own a railroad, 

 or a steamship line ; or there may be an aspiration to be gover- 

 nor of the state. And who knows but some here may be gover- 

 nor of the state or President of the United States? 



But I want to say to you that it is not only the commercial 

 and political positions that count. There are other lines of 

 work. There are other fields in which you can be just as big 

 men and just as big women as you can in political life or in 

 the so-called commercial world. I refer especially to some of 

 the various branches of agriculture at the present time. If I 

 were to ask you students here who is the biggest man in the 

 United States now, probably you would say William Taft ; or 

 3^ou might say Theodore Roosevelt, who is soon coming back ; 

 or you might name someone else. You might name your own 

 Senator Hale ; or Senator Cummins of Iowa. There are, I 

 presume, a number of men that different people would pick out 

 as among the biggest men in the country. 



Now those men may be the biggest men in the country, but 

 I think there are men just as big as William Taft in the coun- 

 try at the present time, just as big as Theodore Roosevelt, just 

 as big as some other men that have been mentioned, who haven't 

 labored in exactly the same lines that those men have, but who 

 have done just as much toward building up the general com- 

 mercial and industrial welfare of the United States. I know 

 some of the big moneyed men like Harriman and Hill have been 

 criticized, but nevertheless these men have done wonders for 

 the United States. There are a number of men in positions in 

 agriculture, like Secretary Wilson, of the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture, like Gifford Pinchot, who is running the forestry 



