232 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to the large total of $78,000,000, and the increase since 1870 has 
been in a still greater ratio. This showing is a subject of con¬ 
gratulation to all our citizens, indicating as it does the speedy 
approach of a day when our people shall have become truly self- 
supporting in every sense of the word. 
No state in the American Union can show more numerous or 
exhaustless water privileges. Here, almost at your very doors, 
there extends a nearly continuous and unbroken water power 
from lake Winnebago to Green Bay, the great lake acting as an 
inexhaustable reservoir and regulator. You might search this 
great country from end to end, and fail to find a superior in its 
many natural facilities for manufacturing, to the valley of the lower 
Fox river. With our enormous extent of lake navigation, pro¬ 
viding almost unequaled opportunities for our shipments—situated 
in the heart of the chief grain-producing districts, directly in the 
■way of the trade of the great northwest, only now commencing to 
be opened up, what a magnificent future opens before us! Great 
as has been our progress hitherto, who shall dare to say that 
greater still is not in store for us ? 
I can hardly be expected to advise the experienced farmers I 
see before me as to the best methods of cultivating the soil. Pol¬ 
iticians rarely make good practical agriculturists, and when they 
attempt to play that role they are more than apt to make a fail¬ 
ure ; but even an unskilled man cannot fail to know, that in the 
raising of stock, the true policy to pursue is, to breed from the best 
blood to be had. It costs no more to raise a fine thoroughbred 
horse, a full-blooded Durham, or a pure Chester White, than the 
expense incurred in the raising of comparatively worthless breeds, 
while the marketable value of the former is double or treble that 
of the latter. 
The importance of furnishing shelter and protection for stock 
from cold and wet is well known, but not always adequately ap¬ 
preciated. The farmer who fails or neglects to provide such pro¬ 
tection, little realizes his true interests, besides being a disgrace to 
humanity m forgetting the comfort of the poor, dumb creatures 
dependent upon him. To sustain life in the animal creation re¬ 
quires a much larger amount of food in a cold than in a warm 
climate. The Esquimaux readily consumes ten or twelve pounds 
