258 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The farmers appear to have just learned the wonderful power 
that lies hidden in the concentrated efforts of association by the 
organization of granges. 
In these granges such questions will be considered and dis¬ 
cussed, and mind will grapple with mind, and these collisions 
will sharpen the intellect, and you will soon learn what minds 
are capable of accomplishing when acting in harmonious com¬ 
bination. If we understand the object of these granges aright, 
it is primarly, to labor for their mutual improvement in agri¬ 
culture, and in house culture ; for social and mental improve¬ 
ment and to this end admit to membership in the order both 
men and women. And as incidental objects of this organiza¬ 
tion they propose to consider and discuss questions of political 
economy, with a view to correct the abuses that have grown up 
of late through legislation that has fostered and built up immense 
monopolies that are leaching out of the producers, all the profits- 
and productions of the country—thus amassing great fortunes in 
the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This system 
is not in accordance with the genius of our institutions. They 
propose to correct it. A waiting world is watching the result in 
feverish anxiety. 
Their success will be a noble dispensation for our country, a 
triumph for equity. It is the object of our institutions to build 
not monopolies but men, to exalt not the few but to raise up gen¬ 
eral humanity, not to build palaces, but to lift up assidious indus¬ 
try to competence, to make our country known not so much in 
individuals, as in the elevation of the great mass—by raising all 
to the highest possible level, by universal education to honorable 
distinction, comfort and prosperity. 
We come now to speak briefly of mechanical labor. If there 
is one thing more than another that will tax the human mind to 
its fullest extent it is to master the mechanic arts. From the 
earliest history of our race down to the present time, the best 
minds of every age have been employed in developing the arts 
and sciences. Strike from the world’s history the labor and 
achievements of the mechanic and the balance would scarcelv be 
worth recording. Do this and you and I would be houseless and 
hatless. It is to the mechanic’s labor that we are chiefly indebted for 
