33 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
that of railroads. According to Mr. Andrews the cost of main¬ 
taining the Ohio canals for a period of five years, 1855 to 1860, 
inclusive, was but one half of one per cent of their cost. The cost 
of repairs on railways is infinitely greater. The Milwaukee and 
St. Paul road reports about 24 per cent, on the capital stock, for 
the year 1862. I find some roads that cost much more than 
this. 
One cause for fear that congress may not make the proper ap¬ 
propriation to complete the improvement of the Fox and Wiscon¬ 
sin rivers rests not only in the fact that the national legislature is 
already submerged with propositions to improve all manner of 
rivers and canals, but that the late panic and the late elections 
may have forced such a mushroom growth of economy, that noth¬ 
ing may be done; or, on the other hand, that too many passengers 
may be crowded into the omnibus, and the whole upset by the 
power of specific gravity. And then, too, those that are inimical 
to our interests, because it may not enhance the value of their 
corner lots in some pretentious city, withal, may be likened unto 
the pious enthusiasts of England, in the 15th century, who wor¬ 
shipped the Lord according to the gospel of selfish Mammon, and 
who met in their temple and laid down the trinity of their pious 
litany as follows: 
11 Resolved, firstly , That the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness 
thereof. 
u Resolved, secondly, That the fullness thereof belongs to the 
saints. 
■ 
“ Resolved, thirdly, That we are the saints ! ” 
Nothing short of such disinterestness and self-sacrificing resig¬ 
nation, could claim that, because forsooth, the lower Fox does 
not discharge its 32,000 horse power of water fall and its pros¬ 
pective commerce, into the turgid basin near the head of lake 
Michigan, that the government should do nothing to open our in¬ 
ter state channel to a commerce incapable of reaching the sea with¬ 
out it Hence, we are assured that every obstruction that antag¬ 
onism can invent, or call up, will be thrown in the way. Some 
of these obstructions are now before congress, and may be epito¬ 
mized as follows: 
