Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
173 
the method of organization to distract your attention from its 
object and its necessity. 
As toilers in the manual industries, we have been regarded as 
plodding, credulous, stupid, suspicious and generally incompetent 
to harmonize into a common attitude of defense or aggression, and 
that if we did as a mass, we could he easily sold , if we could not be 
cheaply bought ; consequently, our habitual neglect to insist upon 
our rights has induced the conclusion that all this is true, or that 
we lack the manhood to do it. 
As producers, it is impossible for us to avoid seeing that we are 
all adrift in the same boat, upon the same sea, and that if the boat 
is either to be skillfully rowed or safely piloted, we shall have to do 
it ourselves. 
With faith and confidence in each other, then, relying upon a 
common safety for continued effort, we must plant ourselves squarely 
upon our own resources and adhere persistently to our own expedi¬ 
ents. And first among these expedients is to make sure of reliable 
sources of information. Facts we must have. A large proportion 
of these may be reached by adapted details of organization, but the 
press must furnish a still larger proportion. The press then must 
be scrutinized, and if need be graded upon a known scale of relia¬ 
bility, giving to outspoken, fearless and unselfish devotion to the 
promulgation of truth and justice, commensurate commendation 
and support. 
Our public schools and text-books must be looked into and put 
into such shape’as to favor the highest discipline of mind and devel¬ 
opment of sound morals, together with a fixed desire in our youth 
for usefulness in the great industries and equities of life 
Our colleges and universities must be examined. Their fruits 
and tendencies noted, their text-books studied, and particularly 
their text-books on political economy wherein the great subjects of 
the production, distribution and consumption of wealth are taught 
to the students, should be analyzed and their truths commended, 
but their false teachings condemned and exposed. 
The popular movements in constituting authority in public af¬ 
fairs should be changed. The caucus system, as now run, is a bois¬ 
terous failure or sneaking sham in the transfer of power, leading- 
all honest observers to the conviction that if all experience has 
been able to furnish no better, neither chance nor intention 
