238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



In a few short years the domain of agriculture has been 

 extended even to the western seaboard, and the waste places 

 of the land have become the garden spots and the granary of 

 the world. 



It was the love of gold and the search for it that brought 

 men out into this western country. The Pike's Peak excite- 

 ment of 1859 and the rush of people to Montana and Idaho 

 started the population of this section of country. But it 

 was the farmers who remained who developed the resources 

 and made them what they are to-day. They took a waste 

 tract of land, and it has become an empire. 



While Colorado is rich in mineral resources, and produces 

 more gold than any other State in the Union, still, all her 

 mineral wealth is insignificant compared with what farmers 

 have done for the wealth of the country, even in a single year, 

 and insignificant as compared with the resources of agricult- 

 ure in Colorado, which are as yet practically untouched. 



Responses were made by Secretary Stahl, Col. B. F. 

 Clayton and President Worst of the North Dakota Agricult- 

 ural College. 



At the afternoon session President Candage of Massachu- 

 setts delivered his annual address, brief abstracts of which 

 are here given : — 



You are assembled here from 3"our respective abodes in the 

 several States and Territories of our broad land, to open, and, 

 by your deliberations, discussions and resolutions upon agri- 

 culture and other topics connected with the farming interests 

 of our great resourceful country, to conduct, the twentieth 

 annual session of this Congress. You are happily met in a 

 place of great natural beauty and grandeur in the centennial 

 State, — a State of vast agricultural and mineral resources, 

 situated " in the midst of the everlasting hills," the grandest 

 and highest mountain range of our continent, from which you 

 may draw inspiration to make this session of our Congress one 

 of lofty ideals. 



In a survey of the world's great agricultural field, the pros- 

 pect for the present and the future is centred on this continent, 

 as giving the promise of the best return to the tiller of the 

 soil to be found anywhere on our globe. Here great droughts, 

 bringing famine and pestilence in their train, are unknown,. 



