68 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
of freemen? The three millions of American farms have made 
America. The harvests from our five hundred millions of culti¬ 
vated acres have built our store-houses and railroads and school- 
houses, and fed our commerce and peopled our cities. The sound 
of the reapers and threshing-machines is the music which allures 
the emigrant to our shores and soothes him into contentment. Ag¬ 
riculture is 
THE world’s GREATEST NECESSITY. 
and its richest blessing. The city, with its royal architecture, its 
monuments, its industry and its culture, is an object of pardonable 
pride to itself, and of admiration to the country, but it borrows its 
flush of ruddy health from the roses, and its dignity and importance 
from the fields. When the husbandman folds his arms and the 
soil sleeps, the proudest city starves, the bustle of her industry is 
hushed in the silence of despair, the shipping deserts her wharf, 
and, though a less curiosity than Pompeii, she is scarcely less deso¬ 
late. Enterprise sits in the shadow of the groaning granery and 
laughs at the flames which melt down a Boston or a Chicago, and 
before the last ember has ceased to burn, sets a new and more beau¬ 
tiful city upon the smoking ruins. But a field, devastated by grass¬ 
hoppers, strikes terror to the very heart of the nation, and almost 
paralyzes its energies. We sit down in the studios of our artists 
amidst the eloquent marble and the reflections of beautiful nature 
upon the canvas, and worship the genius which aspires to excel in 
the New World the artistic achievements of ancient Greece and 
Borne, but, if reflective, never forget that but for the plow and the 
cultivator, these halls of art would be as cheerless and uninviting as 
the chambers of the Roman caticombs. 
The world’s fortune and fame and happiness have been carried 
out by the plowshare, sometimes directed by a Burns, and some¬ 
times by him who, knowing nothing of the world and the world 
little of him, unknowingly and imperceptibly contributed to the 
world’s advancement and died in obscurity and unmourned. In the 
early stages of American agriculture, when the few acres cultiva¬ 
ted were badly worked and a portion of the east and all of this fer¬ 
tile west were covered by the wild growth of nature, the nation 
was weak and only prospectively important. It is considerably 
within fifty years that these States have awakened to an apprecia- 
