Council Chamber, City Hall, Friday Evening, 8 o'Clock. 



Chairman, Charles Z. Tryon, Esquire, President, Hardware Mer- 

 chants' and Manufacturers' Association. 



Mr. Tryon in opening the meeting spoke as follows: Mr. Calwell, 

 Ladies and Gentlemen: I take it that the problem of all civilization is to 

 devise ways and means whereby men may live together in communities 

 with a just proportion of comfort, convenience and happiness to all. The 

 savage was never hampered with any such conditions. He killed his enemies 

 without legal complications, he found his own food in the forest without 

 the necessity of the railway or the store, he grew his own corn and he 

 carried his skins to the nearest trading post and swapped them for such 

 articles as he needed in the way of powder, shot and simple clothing without 

 recourse to any medium of exchange. 



Now all the varied complications of the civilized life of today — the 

 great storehouses, great banking institutions, our railways and granaries, 

 are simply complications that have arisen because we are now endeavoring 

 to live in greatly congested communities. We are all trying to solve, under 

 very difficult conditions, the problem of civilized life, that is, to live together 

 in some measure of harmony, comfort, justice and happiness to all. 



Men have discovered and invented many things. They have experi- 

 mented with the great forces of nature with wonderful results. Some 

 things have been tried so many times that we may feel positively sure of 

 definite results. Others are still uncertain, but I ask you to remember 

 that there is at least one thing about which we may be absolutely sure, 

 and that is the unchangeable and positive law of nature. There is nothing 

 quite so positive and sure as agriculture. 



Engineers may build wonderful structures, and up to a certain point 

 the accumulated wisdom of centuries tells them that a structure will 

 stand a certain amount of weight or pressure; beyond that point these 

 engineers are uncertain. A man may build a twenty story building, but 

 he is not sure that he can rent the rooms. A railroad can project its lines 

 into a new country, but many of them have failed before that country 

 could sustain the railroad. But when we come to mother nature in her 

 primitive form, we are at once upon a sound foundation with absolutely 

 no uncertainty. You may lose faith in mechanics, in science, in philosophy, 

 and even in religion, but there is one solid rock upon which you can always 

 stand no matter who you are or where you are, and that rock is natural 

 law. Under certain given conditions, nature will always do the same thing. 



When you take a seed that is living and put it into the ground, give 

 it proper natural surroundings and conditions, it will grow and you cannot 



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