438 Wisconsin state agricultural society . 
labor is rightly directed. With the aids to agriculture which ma¬ 
chinery brings, and the study and thought now given to this call¬ 
ing, the work is accomplished with a more equal distribution of 
the labor of the hand and brain than in olden times, and the re¬ 
sults are more time for recreation and repose, and a greater degree 
of contentment and happiness. 
Lest you may think I am theorizing, I wish to say that I have 
been in this state twenty-one years, aud that until I was elected 
to the position of Secretary of the State Agricultural Society, 
tilled the soil, earning my bread by the sweat, not of a hired 
man’s brow, but of my own. I purchased a little piece of land 
in the county of Grant, with a few hundred dollars of money 
which I had earned by hard labor, after my majority, moved into 
a poor log house standing upon the tract, and with no further 
capital but a willing hand, good health, and a determination to 
carve my way forward and upward, I looked cheerfully and hap¬ 
pily into the future. I labored hard, as I admire to see the young 
man and young woman labor to-day. I tell you, Mr. President, 
labor developes the youth of our country as nothing else can. It 
makes them self-reliant and indeoendent. In other words it 
A. 
makes men and women of them, such as only we can rely upon 
to uphold and maintain our republican institutions. I desire to 
see, however, that labor remmunerative, and, if intelligently di¬ 
rected, it usually is, so that when old age and decrepitude steal in 
upon them, they may have enough of the good things of this life, 
that their labor may be light and their measure of happiness 
thereby made full and overflowing, as they descend quietly and 
peacefully to that other country, “from whose bourne no traveler 
returns.” 
Now, I have briefly attempted to show that agriculture is the 
foundation, the bed rock upon which all human industries must 
build ; that it is the source from which all supplies must first come. 
If this is true, and, I take it, no one will attempt to refute it, then 
what are its relations to other industries, avocations, or profes¬ 
sions ? I say, emphatically, that it ought, and of a right should 
stand at the head of all departments of effort in this country. 
Farmers should demand a controlling, ruling interest in this gov¬ 
ernment, and show to the world their ability, sagacity, and true 
