THE FARMERS' CONGRESS. 299 



affairs, we are scornfully told ' the word " agriculture " is not in the Constitution 

 of the United States.' We might retort : Neither is the word ' lawyer.' We might 

 very properly reply : If, then, the word ' agriculture ' is not in the Constitution of the 

 government of the people, of whom we are a majority, then we mean to put it there. 

 'If as a class we possess no rights, as a majority, nevertheless, we possess all rights 

 and all power under the Constitution and the government as they stand. 



" In order that agriculture may be placed upon an equitable footing in the execu- 

 tive branch of the government, it is believed, and we should demand, that it should 

 be represented in the Cabinet by a minister of equal influence, honor, and dignity 

 with any and all other constitutional advisers of the President, to the end that its true 

 relations to taxation, to commerce, to finance, and all other great industries, may be 

 effectively studied and understood, and presented and defended with proper dignity 

 in the councils of the nation. That such is now the case, it is but idle to pretend. 

 Farmers of America, we put it to you that it is your bounden duty to yourselves and 

 to your posterity to use the power which belongs to you to enforce this just recogni- 

 tion of your dignity and your rights ! If the word ' agriculture ' is not in the Consti- 

 tution, you have always found, you will ever find, when voters are wanted, it is in 

 every politician's mouth. We make no war upon any profession, calling, or pursuit; 

 we know full well that the prosperity of each is the prosperity of all in any well- 

 ordered community; we simply ask of our representatives a reasonable and proper 

 recognition of our rights; and this, let us cause them to understand, is what we are 

 resolved to have. We are fifty-seven per cent of the population of the United States; 

 we need such organization as shall awaken us to a comprehension of the habitual 

 subordination of our interests to those of every other class, producing and non-pro- 

 ducing. Such organization and such intelligent comprehension of our situation as 

 will secure a proper representation for us in the executive and legislative branches 

 of the governments, national and State, under which we live, is one of the prime 

 objects of our organization. It is only by and through effective organization in every 

 county in every State that we can hope to act intelligently together to obtain practi- 

 cal recognition of our political powers and our political rights. Let your present 

 representatives be made to know that some of the most extensive and important 

 interests of agriculture are to-day seriously imperilled by their failure or refusal to 

 provide remedies adequate to the danger; that you look to them and expect of them 

 to provide proper and sufficient appropriations of the public funds to protect the 

 great animal industries of the country from perpetual menace and imminent danger 

 by contagious disease, constitutional qualms to the contrary notwithstanding. Let 

 them know, also, that the agriculture of the country expects and requires at their 

 hands that the benefits of the Signal Service be extended to the farming operations 

 of the country, as well as to navigation, commerce, and other pursuits, and that 

 whatever organization is required, and whatever funds are necessary for such a pur- 

 pose, ought to be provided without further delay, so that information of approaching 

 storms, cold waves, and inclemencies of the weather, threatening and causing destruc- 

 tion to agricultural products, may be timely sent to every community which railroads 

 or telegraph lines reach, or to which warning signals can be conveyed by any means 

 known to science. As one result already matured of the beneficent wisdom of the 

 immortal Maury, the approach of destructive storms may now be foretold two days 

 or more in advance ; surely agriculture, which bears the greatest burden of taxation, 

 is entitled to the vast measures of protection which would- accrue to her imperilled 

 products from the general diffusion of such timely information, and thereby save to 



