452 
STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY 
THE FARMER AND THE MANUFACTURER. 
An Address delivered at the Wisconsin State Fair, Madison, October 1, 1868. 
BY HON. E. B. WARD, OF DETROIT, MICHIGAN, 
Oendemen of the State Agricultural Society, and Men and Women of Wis¬ 
consin : This State Fair is the result of hard labor of the pioneers, who lev¬ 
eled the forests, grubbed the stumps and broke up the prairies, and washed 
and baked, working hard, early and late, out of doors and in, living simply, 
amidst rude surroundings. These products of the farm and the mill, so 
abundant and wonderful, could not be here unless they had struck the first 
blows, and gone through these heavy toils. Let us give them due honor. 
Amidst better conditions you are following in their steps, and, indeed, 
many of you have been of their number and shared their privations, and 
are already seeing this young and vigorous State pass by the pioneer stage. 
We are a working people, and when we see that labor has done so much in 
making the wilderness blossom and the waste places glad with civilized life, 
we should appreciate the privilege and duty of useful work. 
Each and all should do something for their own and for the common good. 
We have small room for drones, or dignified genteel idlers. 
For my own part I want to be busy ia some decent and useful way, and when 
the time comes in which I can work no longer with hand or brain, I pra 
that my life on earth may cease. 
At this festival of workers, it is fit to see how labor can be best employed, 
and skill wisely guided, to effect highest results. The pioneer’s first effort 
was to struggle for bread, his first occupation tilling the soil, which gave 
rich returns. Next he sold a little surplus to any market, far or near, and 
that surplus has now grown great, and its transportation to markets far away 
costs a large part of its price. England takes little of your wheat, but she 
governs the price, and it takes two men to carry to Liverpool the corn one 
man can raise in Wiaconsin. Cheaper modes of transit can and should be 
had, in time, which will remedy this in some small degree, but the more 
thorough remedy I will speak of soon. As the surplus grows large, capital 
accumulates, and means are at hand to undertake new enterprises, but the 
people make the mistake of supposing that farming and the exporting of pro- 
