3S2 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
1 hope yon will not let its influence die with its closing sessiony 
but that you will in your own neighborhoods, towns and counties,, 
organize clubs, associations, conventions, and thus spread through 
all the state these means of giving information. There is need 
enough. While you have sat here, dozens of farmers living 
within half a dozen miles of this city have stood on the streets' 
or in the stores around the square, not knowing of this meeting,, 
or not caring to attend it; other farmers have walked through the 
halls of this capitol, have stopped for a moment perhaps, at the 
open door of this room, and have felt that this was not a meeting 
that would interest them. 
But not by the spoken words alone, but by the printed words 
of others as well can we learn, and I know not why I should hes¬ 
itate to speak of the agricultural press. It does not profess to lay 
down exact rules for the guidance of farmers in every possible- 
circumstance; its editors do not profess to be infallible, but giv¬ 
ing, week by week, the best thoughts of editors and correspondents,, 
the latest and most important agricultural knowledge, it is to day 
the most wide-spread, the most effective and the cheapest means; 
of diffusing information about agriculture, and with all its faults 
in the past and the present, it has done and is doing incalculable 
service in the work of making farming successful. 
Let each farmer remember that it is not enough for him to be 
intelligent and skillful. It is essential to his best success that his 
neighbors shall also be so. We are too apt to take a selfish but- 
mistaken view of this matter. No farmer can afford, for his own 
pecuniary interest, to be surrounded by poor farmers, if he can 
prevent it, and a little missionary work in the farmers’ club and 
in introducing agricultural papers is dictated by pure selfishness,, 
if by no higher motive. Farmers act as if they did not believe 
this. In one sense, you buy or sell a part of each neighbor’s farm, 
of each road, school house, church in your neighborhood, and just 
as these are good or bad is your farm affected. The finest of 
houses and barns and fences, the best tilled fields, will not shut 
the eyes of the intelligent man who wishes to buy your farm, to 
the fact that all around you are poor houses and barns and fences 
and ill-tilled fields. When you pay your taxes, you may find- 
