66 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
ber of banks and their circulation, and to restrict the treasury issues, 
and so matters will have to drift a while longer. Is it good policy 
to continue in force, a system under which a money power has 
grown up to which every industrial interest is compelled to pay 
tribute, a power which in virtue of the wealth it wields is able to 
command both the government and the country. I think not. 
PRODUCERS’ PERILS. 
BY DAVID WARD WOOD. 
Nearly a hundred years have left their impress on this American 
nation, and gilded it with its present grandeur. A garden has been 
made to bloom in the midst of the wilderness, cities have arisen 
upon the uninviting marshes, and the hum of industr} r has silenced 
the war-whoop of the savage upon the broad prairies. The music 
of the spindle mingles with the song of waters which a century ago 
trickled from the hidden mountain-spring, and murmured through 
the forests which civilized man had never invaded. The glare of 
the smelting-furnace, sifting treasure from native rock and coining 
wealth from the sands of the seashore, streams out into the dark¬ 
ness of the night, and illumines the picture of our national progress, 
until we pause in bewilderment and are half incredulous as to the 
reality of our remarkable achievements. Penetrating our Hoosacs, 
spanning our Mississippi, scaling our Sierra Nevadas, woven in in¬ 
tricate net-work Over our prairies, and uniting Maine to Mexico, 
and California to New England, our 60,000 miles of railroads speak 
loudty of our enterprise and advancement. The locomotive breathes 
its hot, heavy breath upon the piston-rod, and moves like a thing 
of life over the continent, screaming forth the claims of civilization 
amidst the silence of the wild woodlands and the sand-storms of 
the trackless plains; the white wings of our shipping shade our ca¬ 
pacious harbors, and beat the breezes of every sea and reflect the 
sunlight in every port. A world discerns them as far as the eye 
can penetrate the azure of the ocean, and applauds the grace with 
which they bear to foreign lands our cotton, flour, meat, butter, 
hides, grain, gold, potash, tobacco, rice, and petroleum, girdling the 
