60 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



his entire outfit, mental capacity, knowledge, and facilities for accomplish- 

 ing his purpose, is the result of his own unaided efforts, and how largely he 

 is indebted, as the heir of preceding generations, to the freely given labors 

 of others. 



Subtract from the world's knowledge the result of the labors and research 

 which men have given from a desire to leave the world better than they 

 found it, better prepared for the irrepressible coj flict between man and the 

 forces of nature, and you place the race far back in the dark night of bar- 

 barism. 



No man liveth unto himself without dwarfing himself mentally and mor- 

 ally, while by a free intercourse and interchange, he gives of the product of 

 his own field and partakes of the harvest from a thousand, and an apparent 

 sacrifice of purely material interests is repaid a thousand fold in better coin 

 than the pieces of yellow metal which we call money. 



Who, among the active memb-rsof this and similar organizations has not 

 felt an expansion of the generous, unselfish elements of his nature, and a 

 high order of enjoyment, while standing on the platform and giving of his 

 abundance to those in sore need ? Who has not felt an increasing respect 

 for the man, however humble his work, who stands in the presence of his 

 fellows and tells of that which he doth surely know to all wh) may desire to 

 hear ? Therefore, freely as ye have received, from all the centuries of human 

 effort and triumph, freely give. It is the giving which doth not impoverish, 

 blessing alike giver and receiver. 



At the Exposition of Railway Appliances in Chicago last spring, the typ- 

 ical American inventor appeared in force. There were more than a hundred 

 patented car-coupling devices, each of them believed by the inventor to be 

 superior to all the others, and a multitude of other appliances, exhibited by 

 men who cherished the delusion, that, with no practical knowledge of the 

 tasks which they tried to accomplish by some phenomenal brain power, or 

 genius peculiar to themselves, they could solve the problem and remedy the 

 defects which had baffled the efforts and defied the experience and ingenuity 

 of practical men for tifty years. The experienced railroad operator could 

 detect at a glance the fatal defects of the apparatus exhibited by the invent- 

 ive enthusiast, who had entered on a line of action knowing little or nothing 

 of previous successes and failures in the same field of labor, and profoundly 

 ignorant of his own ignorance. That exhibition and convention was an ed- 

 ucator, which opened the blind eyes of men who had worked alone, and 

 taught them that self-reliance is not less effective when tempered by humility 

 and a knowledge of the experience of others. 



The isolated worker is alwa>s subject to his own limitations. He can 

 measure himself only by himself, and learn only that he is equal to himself— 

 a worthless axiom, which suggests no action, and solves no problems. 



Close not your doors and windows, lest you lose a few rays from your own 

 rush light. Shut not out the sunlight and try to live by the light of your own 

 candle. 



The full value of organized association must not be measured or esti- 

 mated by its influence on material interests alone. Man is a dual being ; his 

 social and moral well-being, in fact his entire character, depends mainly on 

 the extent, as well as on the kind, of his intercourse with his fellow men ; 



