PROCEEDINGS. 49 



try. A year ago an attempt was made by this Board to get the city of Indianapo- 

 lis to assist in bringing into existence an exhibit of the beef product of the State. 

 The city, however, gave but little encouragement. 



The proprietors of the Stock-yards and Belt railroad, and commission men 

 were very anxious that such an exhibit should be made, and would willingly have 

 contributed of their means to assist in starting a fat stock show. At the time the 

 effort was made the Ohio valley was submerged in a destroying flood, and the city 

 of Indianapolis was responding to the call of the suflering thousands of people 

 along the Ohio river with wonderful alacrity. A further canvass of the city was 

 abandoned, with the hope that during the winter another effort would be made by 

 the Board and citizens of Indianapolis to hold a fat stock show during the fall of 

 1885. The Industrial Associations of the State have been actively at work, meeting 

 and discussing subjects of special interest. The practical experience of the most 

 successful farmers is in this manner annually furnished by these associations to the 

 Board for publication in our annual reports, thereby increasing their usefulnesa. 

 Cattle breeders, swine breeders, sheep breeders, bee keepers, sorghum growers and 

 tile makers all strive to see which can make their meetings the most interesting. 



A word in regard to the use of tiling. Nothing is being done in the State that 

 gives such good returns to the farmer as a free use of tile. The public health is 

 benefited by its use; the land made more productive and easier of cultivation; it 

 can be plowed much earlier in the spring, and I may safely make this assertion, 

 that when the farms have been propei'ly drained the productiveness of the soil of 

 the State will be largely increased. When tile-draining was first introduced in 

 Scotland by the Scotch farmers, the government of Great Britain, seeing the im- 

 mense benefit it was in bettering the condition of the lands, loaned money to all 

 the farmers of Scotland that would take it, at a very low rate of interest, to un- 

 derdrain these lands, with the condition only that when the interest paid had 

 equalled the principal the debt was to be cancelled. 



Tile draining leads to better farming, better farming leads to diversified agri- 

 culture, and ihe time is now here when the farmers of our State can not but see 

 that to continue in sowing all their lauds to wheat will be ruinous to them. 



Europe is the market for our surplus products Great Britain has been, and is 

 now, actively at work stimulating the production of wheat in her colonies. India 

 five years ago only exported a few million bushels of wheat, but by the fostering 

 care of the British government —giving to India the necessary help to bring her 

 wheat lands into cultivation and by extending the railroads into that immense ter- 

 ritory—India this year will export Jibout forty million bushels of wheat, grown 

 upon lands worth less than five dollars per acre, and by labor at an average of 

 seven cents per day. But the thought may occur that that country is so far from 

 the markets of Europe that the freights for carrying wheat such a long distance 

 will favor us to maintain a fair market price in European markets. Steam navi- 

 gation and the railroad system bring all the world together, and the steamships of 

 Great Britain carrying the products of her factories and manufactured goods to 

 India, Egypt and other countries, on their return trips bring back wheat and other 

 products of these countries at a nominal price by freight as ballast. 

 4— Agriculture. 



