214 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
him for further work in this connection. 
The death of C. P. Atmore, the gen¬ 
eral ticket agent of the L. & N., gave the 
Society a severe setback; for Mr. At- 
more’s successor cancelled the arrange¬ 
ment for the one-cent fare, thus giving 
us a blow from which we have not yet 
recovered, for the regular passenger rate 
on this division of the L. & N. is four 
cents a mile, and few farmers are going 
to leave home, lose time, and pay this 
rate to attend meetings, let the subjects 
be ever so important. 
We are still holding together nom¬ 
inally, waiting for • better times to come 
to us in the shape of the return of the 
old rate. We may not get it, and we 
may, but the good the Society has al¬ 
ready done in awakening interest among 
the farmers of our section and in educat¬ 
ing them in the meeting-habit is of great 
value to all concerned, for it is a very 
difficult matter to get agriculturists to at¬ 
tend meetings. They think they have no 
time to devote to meetings and yet these 
are schools of education to them. The 
very fact of meeting each other and get¬ 
ting interested in each other’s doings 
awakens a livelier interest in all matters 
pertaining to their good. 
We all know that the real prosperity 
of the country depends on its agriculture. 
It is the real creator of wealth, and if 
those engaged in it would only wake up 
and get more mutual confidence in each 
other the good they could do is incal¬ 
culable. To get this ideal state of mat¬ 
ters, we have to begin early. We have 
to start in the district school house. Edu¬ 
cation is at the bottom of it. An ignorant 
man or woman is always a suspicious 
one; thinks someone is going to get 
ahead, of him: for this lack of education 
keeps his mind cramped and his outlook 
narrow. In all agricultural meetings, the 
man who knows least thinks that he know 
most, and this holds true everywhere; 
and the past history of agricultural so¬ 
cieties all over the country will bear out 
what I have said. 
The outlook for this usefulness of agri¬ 
cultural organization is very bright. 
Their past history is full of achievements, 
but their future history will be yet fuller. 
The solving of the present problem of the 
age, good roads, is in the agriculturists’ 
hands, and they are leading the way in a 
wonderful manner. About fifteen years 
ago the farmers of New Jersey pro¬ 
claimed the fact that the state at large 
was as much interested in good roads as 
the farmer; that every individual resident 
of the state, through the market, was 
affected for weal or woe by road condi¬ 
tions, and demanded that the state treas¬ 
ury pay at least half the cost of good- 
road building. This really was the birth 
of the state aid-for good roads in Amer¬ 
ica, and the New Jersey agriculturist was 
at the bottom of it. This work was not 
done by leading individuals among agri¬ 
culturists, but by the combined efforts of 
the agricultural ^organizations of the 
States. Their good work was so evident 
that others caught on to the New Jersey 
idea and the good work spread rapidly, 
until today state aid for good roads ob¬ 
tains in fourteen states. All save two 
east of the Alleghenies have it. Michi¬ 
gan has a sensible law whereby the state 
pays a bounty on every mile of good 
road, ranging from two hundred and fifty 
dollars to one thousand dollars per mile 
according to the class of improvements, 
irrespective of the cost of it. 
The State of Pennsylvania is spending 
over a million dollars yearly for its roads, 
and New York has a constitutional 
