Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 265 
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lay the blame on ourselves where it belongs, instead of on other peo¬ 
ple. Contentment begets courage and makes good citizens. If a man 
gets restless aud looks for help in some other way than by his own 
activity, he is likely to fail. This world is not partial to any partic¬ 
ular party, but every man must be active and diligent. 
Suppose that one-third of the farmers in Wisconsin own their 
farms free of debt, that another third have their farms so seriously 
encumbered as to require the utmost labor and economy on their 
part to sweat it through, and that the remaining third will loose 
their farms because of the encumbrance on them. Is there any¬ 
thing peculiarly hard about this condition of the Wisconsin farmers ? 
It seems to me not; when you come to consider who those farmers 
are, where they came from, and the amount of capital they brought 
with them. Remember that they were gathered largely from men 
relatively destitute of capital in the older states and the old country; 
consider the amount of capital and intelligence they brought here, 
and I ask you where else could they have put that measure of money 
and knowledge to use and realize a more general prosperity from it ? 
In no place on earth, I think. If they had gone into the city of 
New York and set up business side by side with Alexander Stewart 
the chances are that nineteen out of twenty would have sunk into 
irredeemable poverty. The failure of a business man of a city is 
much more complete than that of a farmer. It is only one in a 
million that shoots up like Mr. Stewart in brain power, in intelli¬ 
gence, and so in business. 
I will venture to say that the teachers of Wisconsin, as I met 
them a few days ago in convention, have not had more than your 
average success in life, though they are probably equal to you in 
average intelligence. I don’t complain of my circumstances in the 
world, yet your President, Mr. Stilson, I believe, can cover every 
dollar of my money with a five dollar bill and have money left. 
Money made in farming. 
You cannot find anywhere else so large a body of men with so 
little capital who have succeeded better in life under like advant¬ 
ages than the farmers of Wisconsin. Most of you have succeeded, 
and most of you have succeeded unusually well. And you have 
done it under conditions which you call hard conditions; but they 
are not hard, as conditions go in this world. You could not have 
put yourselves anywhere where you could have done better, on the 
