PROCEEDINGS—EXECUTIVE MEETINGS. 
47 
and they helped to swell the society’s receipts. Why discard 
them?” 
“ How do you know,” replied the other party, “ that they 
are innocent. They are not only foreign to the work of an 
industrial organization, but they are in bad taste, especially the 
ladies’ riding, as a public exhibition, and lower the dignity of 
a great state agricultural society; and whatever is in bad taste 
and tends to degrade the society is not an innocent entertain¬ 
ment for us. Again, how do you know that it so immensely 
‘swells the society’s receipts?’ When has the society tried 
doing without all this humbuggery. How do you know but 
that the people are tired of it and would be glad to see in 
Wisconsin more of a straight-out, thorough-going, legitimate 
and dignified exhibition, in every respect worthy of an intel¬ 
ligent people and of a society which now claims honorable 
rank among the most successful in the United States? ” 
Thus the argument ran; and when the vote to abolish the 
ladies’ riding and all sporting games, and to transform Division 
D for the time into a department of natural history for the 
showing of the natural products of the state, every member 
said “aye.” 
On motion, the board adjourned to meet at 71-2 o’clock in 
the evening. 
Wednesday, February 8, 734 o’clock P. M. 
The board re-assembled at the appointed hour. 
Present—same members as before. 
President Hinkley in the chair. 
The secretary desired to make a communication to the 
board, the subject of which was personal to himself. At the 
meeting held in February, 1870, he had tendered to the board 
an informal resignation of the office of secretary, both on the 
ground of the inadequacy of his salary, and because he had 
received calls to other fields of labor which were equally 
congenial to his tastes and would yield him double, the income 
he was at present receiving. The board, on that occasion, 
