ANNUAL REPORT— MISCELLANEOUS. 
43 
countries of the civilized world of the great international fairs or 
expositions of Europe. Each was looked forward to by the artists 
and artisans of the globe as a sort of grand day of judgment, 
when the excellencies of the excellent and the faults of the faulty 
were to be trumpeted forth to the nations, and woe to him 
who should hold the lowest place. No individual exhibitor, no 
corporation which brought its specimen work, but strove for 
months to make it as near perfect as human skill and machinery 
could render it. Those exhibitions did more to bring the arts 
and trades represented up from the “job work ” level to which 
they had fallen, than any other thing which could possibly have 
happened. They created a world-wide ambition to do good work, 
and the result of that ambition is to be seen in everv manufactur- 
«/ 
ing town and city of the world to-day. 
“It is precisely the same in regard to agriculture or stock. The 
man who sees his neighbor producing a crop twice a large as his 
own, on precisely the same quality of land, will be apt to ask the 
reason why, and if he cares to know it, he can find it out. If he 
sees a man no better off than himself with cattle that weigh more, 
sheep that shear more, cows that give more milk and make more 
butter, and horses that are worth double his own—if he be a true 
farmer, he will find where the difficulty lies and obviate it. This 
mission is successfully accomplished by the agricultural fairs of 
the country. They compare the good work with the bad, inferior 
productions with the better, and by that very comparison, plant 
the seed of reform which will bring forth some thirty, some sixty 
and some an hundred-fold.”. 
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES. 
These organizations are in a prosperous condition. The work 
of the state society will be found under the head of “ proceedings,” 
and the following statement will show the condition of county 
societies: 
