104 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



We do not realize, my friends, the conditions in which we 

 are standing. Who of you are worried about the food you 

 are to eat this winter ? And yet to-day there are thousands 

 in Massachusetts who Ivnow not where the liread is to come 

 from to put in their mouths to-morrow. Coming out here 

 yesterday I was reading of the work being done in the city 

 of Lynn, where they are employing men to do a certain 

 number of hours' work each week in order that they may 

 have food to keep them from starving. Thousands, yes, 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars will be contributed by the 

 wealthy during the next four months that thousands of men, 

 women and children may be made warm and hunger ap- 

 peased. All this in our own New England. The cry for 

 food and heat will not be heard in the farm homes, but under 

 the shadows of the great cities. Never was the lesson pre- 

 sented so vividly as to-day. Never did we realize as to-day 

 the value or the dignity of these form homes, or the cer- 

 tainty that Mother Earth takes good care of every one who 

 intelligently seeks her co-operation. 



Are you worried at all? Your garners are filled, and j^ou 

 Tsnow you have enough for the winter. There never has 

 l)een a day since the sun shone when the farmers of New 

 England had such reason to thank God and take courao-e as 

 in the closing days of this year 1893, because their labors 

 have been followed by the blessing of God and a sure re- 

 ward. 



Carry this thought home. Let it echo and re-echo through 

 these Berkshire Hills, up the valley of the Connecticut and 

 on to the sea, that when man seeks by the highest use of his 

 powers, by the exercise of his reason, by earnest, honest 

 efibrt, to touch the mysteries which surround every move- 

 ment of the farmer, whether with his flocks, his orchards, 

 his fields, his dairy or his herds, lo ! there comes forth a 

 blessino- to enrich and strensfthen for still nobler effort. 



The path that leads to a Loaf of Bread 

 Winds through the Swamps of Toil, 



And the path that leads to a Suit of Clothes 

 Goes through a flovverless soil, 



And the paths that lead to a Loaf of Bread 



And a Suit of Clothes are hard to tread. 



