EXHIBITION—ANNUAL ADDRESSES. 
137 
lation as an article of food, not only nutritious, but already 
prepared for use, and poor mechanical people will regard this 
consideration very highly. 
I do not hesitate therefore,, to say to you, farmers of Wis¬ 
consin, knowing, as I do, the physical character of your land, 
the diversity of your soil, and the geographical position of it, 
that you can safely engage in this business; that you need not 
fear that you will overstock the markets of the world. I 
think you can in this respect vary your pursuits with perfect 
safety. In some respects you are the most unhappy people in 
the world. In the spring of the year you look forward and 
think it will not be good weather for plowing, then you think 
it will be ill weather for sowing, and then you watch the skies 
with the utmost solicitude; and thus all the year round you 
are perplexed until you have the products of your labor safely 
housed in your granary, and then you are the most unhappy 
people in the world before you can decide whether you will 
sell it or hold on. 
Now this unhappy state of mind we escape. We make 
cheese at our factories ; it is sold once in thirty days, and we 
take what we can get through the year. 
There is another great consideration. It is a great matter, as 
every practical farmer knows, to be able to use your labor 
equally all the year round. You are now obliged at certain 
seasons to employ extra hands. But with dairying it is differ¬ 
ent. The labor of winter is equal to the labor of summer. 
All members of the family can do something. They can milk 
or take care of the cattle. And there is another very good thing 
about it. They not only sell their products at the right time, 
but they are not obliged to hang around the village tavern all 
the winter through to learn the price of wheat from the latest 
advices. I believe I am justified in saying to you, as one who 
feels a deep interest in the agriculture not only of my own 
state, but of all the states in the Union—one who at this mo¬ 
ment stands before you with a larger idea of this country of 
ours than he ever had before, that I stand before you full of a 
