Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 215 
first successful agricultural paper of which I have any knowledge, 
was started in Albany, New York, about 1830, by Judge Buel. 
There had been two or three.started previous to this, although I be¬ 
lieve none of them were successful. Judge Buel’s paper was called 
the Cultivator , was issued monthly, and was not more than one- 
quarter as large as the Chicago Evening Journal. The price was 
50 cents per year. Such was the birth of American agricultural 
journalism. To-day it is undoubtedly the best means of educating 
the masses of our farmers that exists in the world. Some of these 
papers are edited with great skill and ability and are as firmly es¬ 
tablished as any of the great papers of our country. 
Thus have I glanced in the briefest manner possible at the past. 
But who would exchange it for the present or for the bright pros¬ 
pects of the future? Remember, too, in the views given, I have 
selected only the most favored nations of the past. If we compare 
the most favored days of the past with the present, what do we 
see? The great masses of the cultivators of the soil, ever and al¬ 
ways bound down beneath a load of ignorance, bigotr} r , supersti¬ 
tion and crime. For them there was no bright to-morrow ever to 
dawn. No change of administration ever ameliorated their condi¬ 
tion. The fall of one dynasty and the rise of another, found 
them still toiling and suffering. From the hovel to the field, from 
the field to the hovel, with no education, no hope for the future, no 
Sabbath, no rest until they sunk down by the way with their eyes 
closed in death and were buried from sight and forgotten. Thus 
the uncounted and countless millions of the tillers of the soil, in 
the ages of the past, have lived and died, with none to hear or heed 
their sad, bitter cries, except Him who hears the raven's cry and 
notes the sparrow’s fall. How is it with us to-da}'? 
Suppose we take a section of our country, commencing at the 
Ohio river, and take a district of territorv on each side of the 
Mississippi 200 miles in width and extend it 600 miles north. This 
would give us a territory of 240,000 square miles, a territory some¬ 
what larger than France, Belgium and Holland combined. As to 
fertility of soil and capabilities of raising bread and meat for the 
support of mankind, its healthful climate, and, in short, its com¬ 
bined advantages, we may safely say that there is not another spot 
of its size upon the face of the earth that equals it. The men who 
labor and cultivate this soil, are, in almost every instance, the own- 
