80 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
crime, poverty and mortality ; to education and religion; and 
in fine, to all those facts of condition which may increase or 
diminish the strength, growth, or happiness of a people.” 
But it is this Social Science—highest and noblest of all the 
sciences—of which Statistics are the foundation and corner 
stone. Need anything further be urged in demonstration of 
their importance to every civilized State ? 
We respectfully and most earnestly ask that this whole sub* 
ject may receive from the Legislature of Wisconsin that early 
and careful consideration to which it is so manifestly entitled. 
AGEICULTUEE. 
During the war, when husbandry was necessarily somewhat 
retarded by the withdrawal of so large a proportion of the 
working force, it is not surprising that many who had formed, 
or were forming, habits of more thorough and systematic man- 
asrement should have relaxed their efforts in that direction and 
o 
made immediate advantage the chief object of their labors; 
nor that, under this plan of operations, broader areas were de¬ 
voted to the best paying crops than could be cultivated in the 
most approved manner. Nor is it strange, though none the 
less reprehensible on that account, that even during the years 
since the close of the war, under the stimulation of high prices, 
wheat, the great staple crop of Wisconsin, has, over and over 
again, been inflicted upon lands long since impoverished by 
the unchanging, land-shinning practices of former years. It is 
nevertheless a just ground of encouragement that, on the 
whole, there has been a steady progress in the direction of 
systematic farming. 
LESS PREJUDICE AGAINST SCIENCE. 
Our farmers have been steadily learning that Science—that 
great bugbear of earlier times—is simply organized knowledge^ 
and, therefore, in no possible sense justly obnoxious to the con¬ 
tempt or prejudices of him whose success in his business must, 
