58 
STATE AGEICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 
to our people and ensure to tlie state a more rapid growth in 
wealth and power. 
Capital and skilled labor alone are wanted to bring about so 
desirable a result, and these may be secured at an early day 
by the adoption of a liberal policy on the part of the State. 
COMMEECE. 
With such a development of our productive industries as 
the State of Wisconsin has made during the past few years, 
the inference is necessary that there has also been a rapid 
growth of our Commerce. 
An examination of facts shows that this inference is even 
more than sustained; for, owing to the fortunate geographical 
position of Wisconsin and her commercial metropolis, this 
great interest reaches far beyond the limits of our State into 
that vast growing empire of the still further Northwest. It 
will also be remembered that the naturally tributary relation 
of those immense areas has been still further strengthened 
and confirmed within a very short period by the completion 
and subordination to Wisconsin interests (which in this regard 
are identical with the interests of those States through which 
they pass) of lines of railway extending into other States. 
Touching the completion of one of these—Iowa and Minne¬ 
sota Division of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Eailway—Alex¬ 
ander Mitchell, Esq., President of the Company, in a circular 
addressed to the directors and stockholders in 1867, makes the 
following interesting statement of facts : 
“The public have now a connected line of railway from the city of New 
York, via Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, to Minneapolis, St. Paul and St. 
Cloud, a distance, of more than 1600 miles, about one-third of which is over 
the Milwaukee and St, Paul Railway. 
“The Winona and St. Peter, the St Paul and Pacific, the Minnesota Val¬ 
ley, the Minnesota Southern, the La Crosse, Trempealeau and Prescott and 
the Tomah and Lake Superior Railroads, which are tributary or connecting 
roads with yours, are all being constructed with more or less dispatch. They 
now, in the aggregate, amount to about 266 miles in actual operation. 
^ “Our new line of I’oad opens to us and to the markets of the world an em¬ 
pire hitherto but little known to the railroad or commercial world. Ic passes 
through the most fertile and densely populated counties of Northern Iowa 
and Minnesota ; it has undisputed pos-ession of the trade of an immense re¬ 
gion of country, unsurpassed for the richness of its soil and the industry and 
