Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
345 
Next to the agricultural press, farmers 1 clubs and granges should 
be the most active sources for the dissemination of knowledge. It 
is your right to expect them to fulfil their mission, and your duty 
to aid them in doing it. But do not forget that they are farmers’ 
organizations, and that consequently the most of their discussion 
should be of the farmers 1 business. There is greater hope of the 
man who asks how he can best improve his stock, than of the one 
who offers a resolution condemning the patent laws. Those laws 
may want amending, but the first thing for every one to do is to 
pluck the mote of unsuccessful cultivation out of his own eye. 
When he has done this, the beam of monopoly by patent, will ap¬ 
pear to him of smaller size. Let your own immediate interests re¬ 
ceive the first attention. Let it not for one moment be forgotten 
that you are farmers, working together to advance the farmer’s call¬ 
ing. 
Again, it will be well for you to remember that the history of 
“Unions 11 shows them to have been as often sources of evil as of 
good, to those for whose special advantage they were created. Let 
it not be so in the farmers 1 Unions that have so wide a field of use¬ 
fulness before them. Be jealous of your rights as farmers and as 
men. Guard them well; but let no hasty or ill-considered action, no 
passionate judgment, no selfish desire of aspiring ambition betray 
you into showing that you have not equally high regard for the 
rights of others. Let these organizations bear steadily, manfully 
forward, toward the “mark of the prize of their high calling , 11 and 
their career shall be a great and grand one for the good they shall 
accomplish. 
✓ 
Finally, I would say that intelligent farming has alwaj^s been a 
profitable occupation. It is to-day, and it will always be so. By 
their fruits you shall know who are the intelligent farmers. They 
are successful, not because they work harder than other men, nor 
because their lands are more fertile, nor because wool grows finer 
upon their sheep, nor because their milk makes more butter and 
cheese, but because their labor is more wisely directed. 
The best general is not necessarily the one who is most fearless 
in leading a charge upon the enemy’s work. But he is the one who, 
remembering there are blows to take, as well as to give, carefully 
surveys his situation and skillfully attacks the enemy at their weak¬ 
est point. In the farmer’s battle of life there are forces at work 
