To His Excellency WILLIAM R. TAYLOR, Governor of Wisconsin:
SIR: - Compared with the last five years, there has been,
the past season, general prosperity among those engaged in
the varied branches of agriculture, except for the growers
of wheat. The season was unfavorable for the production of this
cereal throughout the state, and in many locations the chinch-bug
entirely destroyed the crop. If this total destruction shall
drive the farmers in these unfavorable districts to other branches
of agriculture, and other and better systems of culture, then
their temporary loss may in the end prove a blessing. Much depression
exists in business in the large wheat-growing districts, and
must continue throughout the year. All other products of the
state except wheat, have been a full average yield, and commanded
remunerative prices.
The organization of societies for the promotion of the dairy
interests, and the inauguration of dairy boards of trade has
developed a system of marketing cheese and butter products
which has been a great improvement, and has stimulated this branch
of farming in a high degree. Market days have been instituted
which have practically brought the purchaser to the door of the
producer. Systems of business are constantly advancing; trade
is intellectualized, and prices in the Eastern markets in dairy
products are now largely governed by the trade in the interior
towns. This fact should cause other leading branches of farming
to co-operate for the sale of their surplus annual products,
particularly growers of cattle, hogs, sheep, and the staple cereals.
Members of clubs, granges and other societies would find it to
their advantage to agree to take certain products to their market
town on certain fixed days of each week or month, and associate
together for their sale. A purchaser of live stock can afford
to pay more for a car-load purchased on the same day, than for
the same number bought in small lots on different days. The markets
are continually fluctuating, and the purchaser can make his contracts
with more certainty of a reasonable margin of profits. Concert
of action among producers is what is wanted; larger sales and
smaller profits on each animal or article sold. This may decrease
the number of buyers or middle-men, and if so all the better;
their energy and talent can be directed to other channels of
industry.
In this connection I desire to call attention to an editorial
in the Republican and Leader, by Charles Seymour, esq.,
touching the dairy interests of the state, and giving a brief
synopsis of a discussion of the prominent dairymen of Vermont,
which appears in this volume.
Organization among farmers, and methods to the attainment
of this end, have been much discussed the last year, looking
to bettering the condition of the industrial classes. Societies,
including state, county, and so on to the town club and grange,
have accomplished great good; and especially I can speak of the
beneficial agencies of the state fair and state agricultural
convention, now annually held under the auspices of the Wisconsin
State Agricultural Society. They are all great public educators
of the industrials masses. The annual reports of this society
are more and more sought after each year by the thinking farmers,
as they contain more practical papers than heretofore, and discussions
at the convention of greater general interest. A mutual interchange
of ideas, an intelligent, co-operative action on the part of
those whose interests are identical, is much needed. Farmers
must move with the age; keep up with the other professions -
not years behind. Individual effort can accomplish but little.
Organization is what now moves the world. Combinations of capitalists
go before legislatures and get all they ask, or prevent what
they do not desire. Were farmers ever known to organize and ask
the legislature for special privileges, or to prevent the enactment
of class laws against their interests? Farmers should not be
legal food for other organizations to fee upon, without preparing
to devour in return for self protection. They can at least be
just to others, and at the same time generous to themselves,
if they will but combine and work together for their interests
as other classes do. The more intelligence, the more successful
and better will the organization be. Agricultural papers are
doing much to stimulate and build up the industrial interests
of the state, and they should be encouraged and sustained; but
a "face-to-face talk" will do more good in an hour
to educate and impress upon the mind facts and principles, then
all the articles read in a paper during the year. Hence, farmers
should organize, give their excellent experience to each other,
read, talk, counsel, advise, become more intelligent, and be
better prepared to govern and direct the affairs of state and
nation.
Fine culture, a thorough pulverization of the soil, allowing
all the air, sun, light and rain to freely penetrate it, and
the fine
rootlets of plants to obtain their proper food, is of the
highest importance.
Farmers as a rule, do not devote labor and time necessary
to put their soil in such fine condition of culture as will insure
the best profits. A few days more time given with man and
team to a pulverization of the surface soil would pay oftentimes
an hundred fold. When the rich soils of Wisconsin are placed
in the best possible condition of tillage, and the crop placed
properly therein, and in season, there is but one enemy standing
between the grower and an abundant harvest, with an occasional
chinch-bug or other pest exception. That enemy is weeds, and
is an uncompromising and formidable foe, ruining the crop and
impoverishing the soil, if not exterminated when young. But few
farmers seem to comprehend the vital importance of eradicating
these pests, and particularly of doing it at the right time.
One man with a team and cultivator will do more towards their
extermination when they have but just shown themselves above
the surface of the ground, than three times the labor employed
a few days later, especially in the height of the growing season.
One often hears a farmer say, "my corn will be but large
enough to cultivate next week, or a certain time in the future."
My theory is, and I have always tried to carry it into practice,
to commence to cultivate corn as soon as planted if the land
is in proper condition. Harrow thoroughly once at least twice
is better, before the blade appears above the surface, and again
as soon as it is up. Then start the cultivator and go through
it once a week if possible, and oftener if necessary to keep
the weeds in check. Frequent attention not only destroys the
weeds, but it leaves the soil light and friable, susceptible
of drinking in the dews and rains, rich in ammonia and other
plant food. Crops cannot grow without heat, light and air, and
to admit these the soil must be porous and fitted to receive
them. After heavy rains, cultivate to break the surface hardness
of the ground in cereal crops, when small, would pay largely
on the investment.
Educated labor upon the farm is becoming more and more appreciated
each year, and yet the educational agencies for
the advancement of our youth in the practical branches are
not what I would like to see. Schools for the education of farmers,
mechanics and those of other working industries, should teach
those branches having a direct bearing upon the particular branch
of life work intended to be pursued, and the principles taught
should be daily applied. "It should not only teach the principles
which underlie agriculture and mechanical arts, but it should
teach the things themselves. What we want is not mere culture,
but culture applied, culture realized, culture put at work and
demonstrating day by day its use." The mass of those engaged
in the numerous avenues of labor and industry in this and all
other countries, have little time to pursue branches of study
not intimately connected with their particular calling or avocation.
Life is too short to learn everything, and aside from the common
school education which all should receive, and the general information
upon town, county, state and national affairs, fitting them to
be useful and valuable citizens, persons who obtain their living
by labor in any of the world's industries, have little time which
they can spend profitably upon subjects which do not bear immediately
upon their work. These they can afford to study with care. Division
of labor is becoming more marked and distinct, hence, the importance
of special knowledge for those engaged in any particular branch
of work, that they may be skilled and proficient. Many of the
studies which take up much of the time of the student in our
higher seminaries of learning to-day, are of no particular benefit,
for the knowledge obtained will be never applied in the practical
business of life. The system should be changed, and the learner
allowed to devote his entire time, under the best physical and
mental culture, to those branches peculiarly adapted to his needs
in the field of labor he has chosen, or is best calculated to
fill, and not be compelled to waste valuable time and vital forces
in obtaining knowledge he can never apply to his individual advantage
or to better the condition of the human race.
The finances of the country are eliciting much discussion,
and numerous are the remedies offered by the writers upon
this all important subject for the evils complained of. The
prime cause has been little discussed, and hence is little understood.
It is the unjust accumulative power of money. Money has become
such a power in dictating all values, and the amount now drawn
from the surplus labor and products of the people to pay interest
upon public and private debts has become so handsome, that thinking
men are investigating this subject, believing that a mystery
surrounds this monetary question which ought to be solved and
the people be enable to see the real cause of stagnation in business
throughout the country. The history of the past does not furnish
us with a single example of a want of prosperity in business
where money was plenty and at low rates of interest. The amount
of money supplied by a government for the use and benefit of
the people should at all times be governed by the wants of business
and the security which property can give, and which such money
was created to represent, measure the value of, and exchange
with ease and facility.
The amount of interest which money shall bear annually should
be regulated by the power creating it. In no other way
can it be a just, honest, and unvarying measure of value
for land or other property. No greater fallacy can be taught
the rising generation than that money is a commodity and subject
to like conditions of "supply and demand," as the products
of the industries. The material of which money is coined or manufactured
is a commodity; but when converted into money and used exclusively
as such, looses its power to be bought and sold under "supply-and-demand"
conditions; because, in this new relation, it is a measure of
value of all other things, hence must have a fixed value in itself.
Fix the value of money by limiting the rate of annual interest
it shall accumulate, and that rate to be as low as the average
increased wealth arising annually from all the industries, and
a just standard or measure of value will be established, producing
stability in the price of all products, and allowing the law
of "supply and demand" to legitimately obtain. Until
this is done, fluctuation and uncertainty in prices will prevail,
the same as would exist in weights and measures if the standard
fixed by the Government was changed at the will or cupidity of
the owner.
What is the office of a yard-stick? To measure length. Does
it or its owner determine its length? Not at all. This has
been determined by the government. What is the office of
money? To measure the value of land, labor, and all kinds of
property. Does it, or its possessor, determine its value? The
latter does, by demanding for its use all he can obtain. He should
not be allowed to change a fixed value or measure in the one
case more than in the other.
The supply of money and its just regulation is one of the
most important foundation principles in the science of
government. There has been, and still is, a mystery surrounding
it which the people do not understand. They know that the property
of the country is rapidly accumulating in the hands of the few,
but the cause is not so fully comprehended, or so easy of solution.
They know that while money is commanding 10 to 15 per cent the
gains for labor are not to exceed 3. They are told in explanation,
that this is all right, a sort of Providential arrangement, that
the many should be born to labor for the few and support them
in idleness and luxury, when in fact, the true cause is an unjust
distribution of the wealth which labor creates, by unwise enactments
of law in favor of money, giving it an accumulative power it
ought not to possess. The sooner the government adopts a strictly
mercantile currency, a dollar in paper for one of gold or silver
in her vaults, or cuts loose from a gold basis entirely, issuing
paper money exclusively, based upon the faith and credit of the
country, at low, fixed rates of interest, the better for industry,
trade and business generally. Paper money, based upon gold, under
existing laws of this, and nearly all other countries, is dishonest,
a deceit, a fraud, and a lie. No honest and just reason can be
given why a person or corporation owning a million dollars in
gold, should have the right to issue five to ten times that amount
of paper, thereby increasing his wealth five to ten times by
the transaction, than that persons should be allowed to organize
and issue a like amount of currency based upon real estate, owned
by them, of like value. The former is more easily convertible,
otherwise the cases are parallel. Neither are just or honest
toward other property owners. This currency question is to be
one of the coming subjects in the near future, and none will
be of more importance. It is of vital interest to every man and
woman who labors in any department of human effort, and should
receive at their hands careful, earnest thought, study and consideration.
If Congress should fix the rate of interest as low as the
increase of annual gains from the productive industries, and
adopt stringent laws for taking higher rates, the currency
of the country would now be ample, and the experience of centuries
would be realized - low rates of interest and general prosperity
in all departments of industry.
Before the publication of the volume for the 1875-6 the grand
exhibition, the centennial celebration of the nation's
birthday will be upon us. Congress has made it an international
exhibition and many of the foreign states have accepted the invitation
and will doubtless be fully represented. The various states of
the Union are taking the necessary steps to be fully represented
in all which contributes to their general prosperity and advancement,
and I am rejoiced that Wisconsin fully appreciates the importance
of having her growth, resources and progress fittingly shown
and demonstrated at this World's Fair.
The Governor is authorized under an act of the Legislature
of 1875, to appoint five state managers, who will act in
concert with the commissioners of the state, and a part of
whose duties shall be as specified in the act as follows:
Section 2. The duties of said State Centennial
Managers shall be: To disseminate information regarding the exhibition;
to secure the
co-operation of industrial, scientific, agricultural
and other associations in the state; to appoint co-operative
and local committees, representing the different industries of
the state; to stimulate local action on all measures intended
to render the exhibition successful, and a worthy representation
of the industries of the country; to encourage the production
of articles suitable for the exhibition; to distribute documents
issued by the Centennial Commission among the manufacturers and
others in the state; to render assistance in furthering the financial
and other interests of the exhibition; to furnish information
to the commission on subjects that may be referred to the board;
to care for the interests of the state and of its citizens in
matters relating to the exhibition; to receive and pronounce
upon applications for space; to apportion the space placed at
its disposal among the exhibitors from the state, and to supervise
such other details relating to the representation of citizens
of Wisconsin in the exhibition as may from time to time be delegated
to it by the United State Centennial Commission.
I am much pleased to also state that the Legislature has
judiciously and as I believe wisely, appropriated to the
"Women's Executive Committee," of this state, one
thousand dollars, to defray expenses incident to the part the
women of the United States propose to take in this World's Fair.
Space has been allotted in this great exhibition, to be called
the "women's department," and I doubt not it will be
one of, if not the most instructive, attractive
and profitable branches of the exhibition.
No effort should be spared to place our noble state, rich
in resources and possibilities, in a favorable light before the
people of the world at this centennial gathering.
The first annual report of the Commissioners of Fisheries
of this state, will be found in this volume, and contains
suggestions and recommendations of much interest, as it is
intimately connected with the great food producing capacity of
the state. The legislature of 1875, made an appropriation of
$2,000 to encourage and foster this branch of industry. I regret
that the sum had not been larger, believing that with the proper
effort, our numerous lakes and streams may be made to afford
food resources of more value than double the area of the best
cultivated farms in the state. The commissioners state "that
no state in the Union, disconnected from the seaboard, is better
suited for fish culture than Wisconsin."
Fish culture is no longer an experiment. The state should
give it an active and generous support. Private parties will
also
find it a pleasant and profitable branch of farming, if their
water supply is plentiful, and the conditions and surroundings
are favorable.