FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 199 



agree to stick by the orgaiiization. and it will make money for 

 you, and I don't know of any place where that is needed as 

 in a community where there is such a large number of small 

 growers. When I was invited to come up here, I sirggested 

 to your secretary I would talk along this line about organ- 

 izing yourselves for business purposes, and if you please for 

 political purposes. Perhaps some of you gentlemen think I 

 am treading on dangerous ground when I suggest organizing 

 for political purposes, and you say you must keep politics out 

 of your Pomological Society. That is the greatest mistake 

 you ever made in your life ; you want to bring politics into 

 your pomological society, and keep it out of the legislature. 

 You don't want any politicians in the legislature ; here is the 

 place for them right here. Now I don't mean politics that 

 goes by the name of democratic politics or republican poli- 

 tics, but I mean farmers' politics and business politics ; I mean 

 the politics that will give you good schools, and give you 

 good county officers, and give you good roads ; that is the 

 sort you want, and that is the kind we have not got in Vir- 

 ginia. I have got a remedy for a good many of the legisla- 

 tive ills that we are having trouble with to-day. A certain 

 individual by the name of Thomas W. Lawson is w-riting in 

 Everybody's Magazine and he sa}'S he has got a remedy, but 

 I have got a remedy for the evils he speaks about, and a good 

 many of the evils you and I suffer from. I have heard the 

 Consolidated railroad controls your legislature ; I don't know 

 whether that is true or not, but everywhere in this United 

 States, and especially in New England and the South, we 

 have been engaged in restricting suffrage ; we say to a cer- 

 tain class of people, "We don't think you ought to vote," 

 some for one reason and some for another, and so we make 

 various restrictions; and we say this fellow shouldn't vote 

 because he don't own a mill, and to another he shouldn't vote 

 because he can't read or write. I am not quarreling with 

 that idea, but now after you have restricted your suffrage, 

 then you ought not to stop there ; then you ought to impose 

 a tax of $50.00 on everv^ man in Connecticut who don't vote 

 every time there is an election. You keep the bad man away 

 from the polls, and the good man stays away of his own 



