among our own people, and, without being justly charge- 

 able with selfishness, first of all for our own benefit. 

 But we, for ourselves, and representing the farmers of 

 the county, are interested not only in agriculture but in 

 the good order and well being of society, in establishing 

 and maintaining good homes, the best citizenship and the 

 best social life. 



You are here, we are all here, as men and citizens, 

 proud of our citizenship, appreciating its privileges and 

 its blessings, desirous and determined to transmit them 

 to our children and our children's children, impressed, I 

 trust, with a sense of the high duties and responsibilities 

 it imposes, and recognizing always the constant claims of 

 society and the state upon us. 



The best farmer, in the largest and best sense of the 

 word, is the best citizen ; that is to say, the better the 

 farmer the better the citizen. 



He is honest — honest with himself, honest with his 

 ground. He is not always taking from it and never re- 

 turning ; he gives back a fair share of what he takes 

 from it ; he does not expect " to eat his cake and have it 

 too." If he takes away potash, or nitrogen, or phosphoric 

 acid, he will put some back in one way or another — 

 either returning it in kind or growing a crop that does 

 not call for it, and allowing the forces of nature and her 

 resources, in earth or air, time and opportunity to make 

 restoration. He does not believe that plants of any kind 

 will grow with nothing to feed on. Win- will a man 

 waste his time, labor and money scratching over ten acres 

 when he hasn't manure enough for but five ? and when 

 the five will give him a better immediate return, and in 

 each successive year also, than the ten, with half the 

 labor ? Any man, you will say, is a fool to buy ten shares 



