l^he Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



11 



the best results. We have a wonderful soil, and we have a won- 

 derful people, but we have been going along content just to let well 

 enough alone. Everything came easy for us ; nature has been very 

 kind to us ; anything we put in the ground would grow ; and nothing 

 would better illustrate the feeling of being satisfied to let well 

 enough alone than this : Some years ago, when a company of 

 army engineers were locating the route of the Intercoastal Canal in 

 our state — part of it was completed, but part of it had to be done 

 with the aid of teams — they came to a beautiful section of our 

 state and saw a big family sitting under a great big oak tree; that 

 family had a splendid tract of land, but there was only a small 

 portion of it under cultivation ; and someone in the party said, 

 "Why don't you cultivate the rest of this land?" He replied, 

 "What's the use? We have enough." That is the spirit we want 

 to get away from, and now it is not only the spirit' of doing things 

 different from the way we used to do them, but the necessity that 

 we must do it, we must use those lands, and we must put them 

 to the uses for which they were intended. It is not only a ques- 

 tion of whether we ought to do it or not; it is a duty and it is 

 compulsory. 



Speaking of the different arts, I read a few days ago that 

 'way back in 1859, in a speech to the Agricultural Society of Wis- 

 consin, Abraham Lincoln said : "The most valuable of all arts will 

 be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest 

 area of soil." 



We have the soil and the acreage and all the other things. 

 God has blessed us with a splendid climate, and what we may lack 

 in people we can get from immigration. I was one of those who 

 never believed it was necessary to bring them all down into this 

 section of the country. You have the people in this country ; they 

 only have to be educated up to an appreciation of the value of those 

 lands, and learn the possibilities of them and see the uses they can 

 be put to; and then the farmers from the great West and North- 

 west can come down here and develop these lands with the energy 

 they have shown in their own sections of the country ; and then I 

 believe every section and all the lands of the state will be put to use. 



Now, my friends, I hop>e the deliberations of your conference 

 will be entirely successful, and on behalf of the people I want to 

 say it is their earnest desire that they will be, and they bid me say 

 to you that you are most heartily welcome here. I thank you. 

 (Applause.) 



Must Get 

 Away from 

 Old Ideas 



Immigration 

 Not Essential. 



