HUNDRED YEARS' PROGRESS. 11 



President Clark, of the Agricultural College, was then 

 invited to take the chair, and he stated that the first business 

 in order was a paper upon 



A HUNDRED YEARS' PROGRESS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



BY CHARLES L. FLINT. 



Mr. Ohairman and Gentlemen:— The paper which I am 

 about to present to you was written with the design of 

 creating some interest in the minds of the farming community 

 as a preparation for the Centennial of 1876. It was pre- 

 pared at the request of the Commissioner of Agriculture at 

 Washington for his last Report, but as Congress refused to 

 publish that Report, there appears little probability that it 

 will be generally accessible to the people in that form, and 

 hence several members of the Board have requested that 

 it be submitted at this meeting. . . 



The Centennial Celebration, to take place in the city of 

 Philadelphia in the year 1876, is to be a memorial of the 

 struggles, the sacrifices, the heroiC endurance, and the 

 triumphs of our fathers in founding a free government, 

 claimed to be the highest type of civil polity which the world 

 has ever seen. As the time draws nigh, this grand occasion 

 appeals to the pride, to the patriotism, to the reverence for 

 the past, to the memory of the dead, to the highest and most 

 unselfish feelings of every American heart, to make it a 

 success, and, beyond all question, the grandest event of the 

 sort which mankind has ever beheld. Anything short of this 

 will fail of its purpose. 



It is true the happiness and prosperity of a nation depend 

 upon the union and the harmonious development of every 

 variety of industrial pursuit ; but the groundwork and the 

 pillar of civilized society, on which its prosperity, its solidity 

 and its glory must ultimately rest, is agriculture, the pro- 

 duction "of the means of sustaining a rapidly growing popula- 

 tion. Commerce draws its life-blood from this ; manufactures 

 grow out of it. " They all stand together," as Webster said, 

 " like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the center, and that 

 largest is agriculture." 



