206 
STATE AGEICULTUKAL SOCIETY 
OPENING ADDRESS. 
Bt B. K. HINKLEY, President. 
GmHemm of the State Agricultural Society and Fellow Citizens : 
It is the prerogative of the Society I this day have the honor to represent 
to impose such duties upon its officers as maybe necessary to the entire 
accomplishment of the important objects for the promotion of which it was 
originally established. And inasmuch as I hold it to be the duty of every 
member thereof to yield the most implicit obedience to all its requirements, 
there seems to be no honorable alternative for me but to formally open this 
State Exhibition with an address. I shall endeavor to comply with this 
demand upon my efforts so far as to make a few remarks appropriate to the 
occasion, and not being prepared to make a formal address in the popular 
sense, will content myself with a brief review of the circumstances and 
motives which have hitherto determined the policy of the present board of 
officers. 
It is now three years since we were gathered together for the purpose of 
making an exhibition of the products of our industry, as a state, and of inter¬ 
changing views as to the best means of advancing the material and social 
interests of the commonwealth. The last exhibition was the most complete 
and successful of any that had ever been held in Wisconsin ; and the Society, 
stimulated by the results of that and previous efforts, was largely encouraged, 
so that it planned an exhibition for 1861 on a still more liberal and mag¬ 
nificent scale. But great political events, such as few if any anticipated, 
soon transpired. The whole nation was plunged into a fearful civil war; 
the grounds and improvements we had intended for the exhibition of 1861 
were turned over to the Government for a military encampment; the Legis¬ 
lature, in its very questionable wisdom, repealed the law by virtue of which 
the Society had received from year to year an appropiiation of |3,000 from 
the moneys of the State; the means of the Society, to the amount of some 
$5,000, remained unavailable in a recognized but unaudited account against 
the United States; the public mind was distracted and absorbed by the 
deplorable condition of the country, and postponement after postponement 
of our annual fairs followed as a natural, if not a necessary, consequence. 
But we have not forgotten that industry is the only basis of the material 
prosperity of ^State and Nation, nor that the final triumphant issue of the 
Government of our choice from the deep troubles by which it has been well 
