330 
Annual Report of the 
healthy climate, a rich find productive soil, and containing immense 
water-powers and vast mines of lead, copper and iron, and broad 
forests of pine, and inhabited by an intelligent, energetic and perse¬ 
vering people, the state of Wisconsin is noted among her sister 
states for her rapid progress and development. 
Her noble cities and beautiful villages are but the indices of her 
vast resources, intelligence and energy, aided by a system of univer¬ 
sal education. With all these surroundings, and all these incentives 
to action, beckoning us on to still greater success and progress in 
fill that pertains to the development of the state and particularly 
to that of agriculture and its kindred arts, let us move on to still 
greater success, and as we yearly bring to these annual fairs a 
part of the result of our labors, let us note carefully each improve¬ 
ment that our progress may be still greater. 
The’question of cheap transportation has become the great ab¬ 
sorbing question of the day. The water routes to the seaboard have 
always presented the cheapest transportation at all seasons of th$ 
year when they could be used, and it is of great interest to agricul¬ 
ture that these avenues of transportation be improved. 
The consolidation of the railroads have resulted in such immense 
combinations of capital that the people have become alarmed at the 
centralization of such immense wealth. The railroads by several 
acts of bad faith and by listening to unwise counsels have done 
much to provoke and bring on the present difficulty that could and 
should have been avoided, yet we are not unmindful of the aid they 
have rendered the state in its development. While the people 
should ever be tenacious of their rights, yet they should ever be 
just. All we should ask is the fair line, as between the producer, the 
consumer and the carrier, and let us endeavor to solve this question 
of cheap transportation wisely, dispassionately and in strict jus¬ 
tice to all. 
Manufactures should command a share of our attention. Let me 
urge upon the farmers of the state the importance of building up 
manufactures among us. The rapid growth of industries in the 
state will do much to aid cheap transportation, and we as farmers 
will be false to our interests if we do not encourage their develop¬ 
ment. A purely agricultural state is always a dependent state and 
subject to great vicissitudes. The wealth of their products is wast¬ 
ed away in getting them to the consumer, but not so with the far- 
