166 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Now, I make these remarks for this reason. Experiments 

 tried in this way, breaking in upon the regular duties of the 

 college professors, must necessarily proceed very slow. The 

 farmers of this Commonwealth, I find, are all aroused to the 

 importance of these questions. We cannot work fast enough 

 to supply the demand. The farmers of this Commonwealth 

 could not wait for the results of these experiments with fertil- 

 izers. They jumped into my car. before I got half ready for 

 the load, and it will be so perpetually. It cannot be other- 

 wise. We cannot work fast enough, and we must have long, 

 long years to go through and complete these experiments, 

 before they will be ready for the public, as we are situated. 

 Now, what follows? The Commonwealth of Massachusetts 

 to-day demands an experimental station at the expense of 

 the Commonwealth. That is what we demand. I have begun 

 this year an experiment at the college that, work as hard as 

 I will, I cannot complete for the next ten years, working as I 

 do. Connecticut has her experimental station. I am glad 

 for Connecticut, but I am ashamed for Massachusetts, for we 

 ought to have been first in the field. And when I say Massa- 

 chusetts, I mean the men in State Street ; I mean the men, 

 women and children in your factories and your manufacturing 

 establishments all over the State, as well as the farmers who 

 are tilling the soil and growing the crops. Every man, woman, 

 and child in this Commonwealth is interested in the results 

 of experiments of this kind. Therefore, the Legislature of 

 Massachusetts should be called upon to establish an experi- 

 mental station, and thoroughly equip it to experiment, not 

 only with fertilizers, but with all our crops, with stock, with 

 dairy questions, and everything of this sort, and work them 

 out, and, as a result, every man, woman and child in the 

 State will be benefited. 



Now, then, we have got through the presidential election, 

 brother farmers, — thank God for that ! It has been a sin for 

 a farmer to talk politics. I propose that for four years we 

 forget and discard general politics, mercantile politics, manu- 

 facturing politics, and that we have four years of agricultural 

 politics, and that farmers shall come to the front and say, 

 "We have rights and interests that other classes shall respect, 



