Exhibition — Opening Address. 
63 
grain like a monster, and as Napoleon said at the Paris Exposition 
when looking at the Pitts American machine, that it was terrible 
to behold. Railroads now span the continent and penetrate every 
agricultural district to carry the farmer’s products to market, and 
steamships plow the mighty ocean freighted with the products of 
every clime, and the telegraph with lightning speed tells the wants 
of every market and the rise and fall in price of every product. 
Standing as we do at the close of the first century of Amer¬ 
ican Independence, and just entering on the second, as we cast our 
eyes backward and behold the great progress that has been made 
since the time that the bell pealed out its tones on the midnight air 
that an independent nation was born, and then by a prophetic eye 
penetrate the vista of future years and attempt to grasp and com¬ 
prehend the vast magnitude of the improvements and discoveries 
that will be made in the next hundred years, we are overwhelmed 
with the thought. That improvement is to stop or even slacken, no 
close observer will believe. 
Where is the man that is to attach steam to the reaper^ as has 
been done already to the plow, or, more practical still, where is the 
man that is to perfect the binder until its operations shall become 
so perfect that the reaping and binding of a score of acres of wheat 
shall be only an ordinary day’s work? Where is the man, or set of 
men, that are to teach the farmers by precept and example, too, 
how to double the productiveness of their soil, and cheapen the 
cost of production? They are coming. Then let us see to it that 
agriculture keeps pace with the other industries in this grand 
march of progress. But while contemplating the bright future of 
agriculture and manufactures, and other kindred industries, there 
is another and sadder thought that steals in unbidden. Shall the 
nation celebrate a second Centennial where the present is, and 
where American liberty was first cradled, or shall bribery and cor¬ 
ruption^ like the rust and mildew, and like the chinch bug and moth, 
suck up the life blood of the nation, and we go to decay? Rome 
fell, not by her external foes, but by her internal corruptions. 
Farmers of Wisconsin! see that your laws are made for plow- 
holders as well as bondholders. We, as farmers, will do our share 
in paying the national debt at 100 cents on the dollar; but let us 
dismiss from power, without regard for party, those political dema¬ 
gogues that would make us pay 120 or 130 cents on the dollar for 
