Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

from season to season, that growth may be profitable, and the demands of consumers met in which all classes are intensely interested.

The well established system of commercial fertilizer inspection, by the secretary of the State Board, has long since been generally recognized as a great necessity, not alone for the farmers who must resort to the use of fertilizers, but for manufacturers who offer their goods upon the Ohio markets. About one hundred and twenty manufacturers of fertilizers seek the patronage of Ohio farmers, and near seven hundred brands of goods, adapted to different plant growth, are found upon our markets, which, by the provisions of the law and the rigid work of inspection, are well known in chemical ingredients, and no farmer need be compelled to purchase blindly.

The last General Assembly placed another duty on the secretary of the Board of Agriculture, similar in its workings to the fertilizer law. A bill was enacted into law providing for the inspection and analysis of commercial feed stuffs, and under the provisions of this law farmers and manufacturers will receive the same guidance and protection that has been and is being given them through the fertilizer law. All feed stuffs offered for sale in Ohio will be inspected and analyzed, and the findings published for the information and protection of those interested. This law is far reaching in its benefits and will result in much good to the live stock interests of the State.

The work of inspecting nurseries and orchards, for the eradication of insect pests that have such disastrous effects in orchard production, and in guarding against the distribution of diseased nursery stock, has been carried on by the proper division of the Department of Agriculture, and the particular results of the work will be found in the reports and bulletins of that division. The State Board of Agriculture, as the Board of Live Stock Commissioners, has conducted its investigations and its work with very marked success, having had several serious outbreaks of disease to contend with during the year, but succeeded in preventing spread of the same and thereby avoiding great loss to owners, breeders and feeders and benefiting the State in a measure beyond calculation. The reports of the Board and its veterinarian give a detailed account of the diseases that have broken out and the means taken to eradicate the same.

The State Fair, ever near to us, and having such close relation to every county of the State, continues to be a leader among all the state fairs of the land. Its growth, in many respects, is phenomenal. At the annual exhibitions farmers and manufacturers clasp hands over their achievements and the general public is benefited by the great object lessons presented in each of the many art and industrial departments and divisions of the fair. The State Fair is a college of learning, a guiding star for the masses who avail themselves of its educational advantages.

The exhibition of 1904, notwithstanding the great counter school at St. Louis, was a success beyond the expectancies of its nearest friends.

Every department was filled with the best the farm, the shop, the factory, the studio and the home were able to and had produced, and the interest manifested by the people of the State, by their generous attendance, was assurance that the efforts of the Board, in providing an exhibition fraught only with the elements of education, was truly appreciated.

Each department of the fair is yearly growing greater and greater, and it becomes a study of your Board to meet the demands upon this growing institution. Nowhere was this more evident, the past year, than in the department and divisions of machinery and agricultural implements; these manufacturing interests completely filling all available building space and also stretched out

over acres of open ground, in presenting the lessons of relationship to the farm. The Board found itself facing the necessity for greater and better facilities to accommodate the manufacturers of the State, in presenting to the people their important exhibits.

Building facilities more nearly equal to those which have already been provided for farm production and for live stock, by the approval and aid of the General Assembly, are now under way for the manufacturing interests, and these buildings will be completed in ample time for the State Fair of this year, 1905. There will be two great machinery exhibition buildings that will accommodate the increase of exhibits in this important direction, and better serve the purposes of illustrating the workings of the many kinds of machines and implements now necessary in the profitable cultivation and harvesting of our diversified crops; in the handling and manipulation of our products, and for every purpose connected with the farm, the forest, the orchard, the dairy and the stock yard. The Board has also under way a new and up-to-date poultry exhibition building, and when the State Fair of 1905 is thrown open to the public there will be many evidences of improvement to maintain its reputation as a leader, and bring credit to the State that always leads in that which is for the people's good.

As interested workers in agricultural and manufacturing promotion, we are proud of the State Fair of Ohio; proud to know that it has been builded up to, and is recognized and admitted to be one of the important educational institutions of our State, and that it is pointed to by other states seeking to advance their agriculture and allied industries, as a model after which to pattern.

In the success of the State Fair every member and officer of your Board has labored earnestly and every county has responded nobly. As the presiding officer of the Board, I wish in this public manner to express my appreciation and thanks to each member and officer of the Board for their valuable labors, and to the various county societies for their harmonious co-operation in presenting Ohio in her best colors.

Gentlemen, I do not wish to detain you longer, and will only add that I hope many things will develop and crystallize in this annual meeting that will add materially to our welfare and the good of the State, and that the year upon which we are just entering may be noted for many advances and many comforts and benefits to all the people; and now, thanking you for your kind attention, we will proceed with the program of the meeting.

President Carpenter: We will have music by the quartette.

A song, "Old Black Joe," sung by the Cecilian Ladies' Quartette." (Applause.)

President Carpenter: Gentlemen, my only apology for introducing my address before the Governor spoke was his request that I do so, and I now have the pleasure of presenting to you the Governor of Ohio. (Loud and long continued applause.)

REMARKS OF GOVERNOR MYRON T. HERRICK.

Mr. Chairman, Governor Bachelder, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I do not mind telling you the inside facts in regard to this change in the program. Senator Carpenter read me his most excellent address this morning and I was so much impressed with it, and not being prepared myself, I think

that he saw at once that I intended to appropriate his speech; therefore, he endeavored to head me off. (Laughter and applause.)

A year ago I had the pleasure of facing you and addressing you, and I see before me many familiar kindly faces that I saw last year.

Much has happened during that eventful year. Much has happened in our homes and our families; much has happened in the great State and our nation. We have been making history during that time.

And this year, as it has been with every year in the advance of our great republic, we meet with a feeling that there has been an advancement, not only in what you so definitely and so exactly represent, but there has been a great advancement in the moral uplifting of mankind, and in the material advancement of our State and nation.

It is a splendid thing, my friends, to be a constituent part of a great nation, that each year, each anniversary, when we citizens gather together we may say to ourselves that we have once more a credit on the right side of the ledger. It is a great thing also to be of a nation in which we as individual members are the individual members of that nation; that we each carry a sense of responsibility of citizenship, and are a part of this great government which is in the great forward march of the nation, taking the lead in civilization, Christianity and in uplifting mankind.

I suppose we here at home, and in this meeting more especially, deal with the material things of life. Of course the success in material advancement only puts us in a position to advance on social and other lines. Therefore, what has been read by your president of the happenings of the year, and of the position of that best of all things in the nation, the foundation from which we build agriculture, indicates that we today may consider the material side well cared for, and that we have greater opportunity for all of those things which go to the uplifting and elevation and betterment and happiness of mankind.

In his able address Senator Carpenter has not touched on one important act of advancement in the year, to which I desire to call your attention, and that is the beginning of a department of good roads, by a law enacted by our legislature, which in its small beginnings-like the creation of any department of our State-means decided progress. Only a short time ago in the nation there was established the agricultural department, and the administration was so fortunate as to find a man peculiarly fitted for that place, both in the estab lishment of that department, and especially I speak in the installing at the head of that great department of Secretary Wilson, who has so faithfully performed the services, who has been so strong and powerful in his advancement of the great agricultural interests of this State and this nation, that he has been retained by administration after administration without question. It was a splendid movement.

The states throughout the whole country are paying greater and greater attention to these vast interests.

In the enactment of the law for good roads, with which some of you are doubtless familiar, I desire to give you just a few of the details which I have copied from the statutes of Ohio relating to this important department. I will not go into details further than to call your attention to some important points in its provisions.

The State, in the passage on the 18th day of April, 1904, of the act creating the office of State Highway Commissioner, stands firmly committed to the policy of state co-operation in building and improving our public highways. The object and purpose of the State Highway Department is to instruct, assist and co-operate in the construction and improvement of public roads under the

direction of the Highway Commissioner, who is a trained civil engineer of large experience in road building, and who shall make a study of the best methods of building roads employed in other parts of the country.

The county commissioners of any county by resolution may direct that any road or any section of road of more than one mile in length, with stated exceptions, be improved; or the owners of at least fifty-one per cent. of the lineal feet along said road may petition the commissioners to improve such road under the act, which petition the commissioners shall grant if such improvement be in the interests of the public. When more roads are applied for than can be completed in the county in a year, first regard shall be given to the most important road and the distribution of the benefits of the policy to all parts of the county.

The township or townships through which the road to be improved runs are required, before the road is approved by the commissioners, to pay twentyfive per cent. of the cost of the improvement. When the road is built or the improvement made, the State Highway Commissioner shall certify the total expense of such construction or improvement to the county commissioners, and to the trustees of the township or townships and the abutting property owners, respectively, designating the amounts to be borne by the State, the county and the township or townships, and the abutting property. One-fourth of such cost or expense is to be borne by the State, and three-fourths shall be a county charge in the first instance, but one-third of such three-fourths, or twenty-five per cent. of the whole shall be paid by the township or townships. This twenty-five per cent. borne by the township is divided, ten per cent. being a charge upon the whole township and fifteen per cent. upon abutting property. The fifteen per cent. to be borne by abutting property is apportioned according to the benefits accruing to the owners thereof by reason of such improvement, notice of course being given of the time and place of such apportionment by the commissioners.

The work is to be paid for as it progresses upon estimates of the engineer in charge of the work, but in all cases twenty per cent. of the cost must be held back until the work is satisfactorily completed.

A county or township availing itself of the provisions of this law and receiving such State aid, shall bind itself to maintain the roads thus improved in good repair for the free use of the public.

The construction and improvement of highways under this act shall be taken up in the order of the receipt of the certified copy of the resolutions of the county commissioners.

The standard width of highway provided for by this act is not less than eight nor more than sixteen feet, except for some special reason of the Highway Commissioner, the width may be greater.

Counties already having roads of the approved standard width and construction are entitled to their proportion of money appropriated under this act, for which the commissioners may make application to the Highway Commissioner before January 1st of each year, when it shall be forwarded to the county treasurer. The commissioners shall then levy on the total tax duplicate a tax sufficient to equal the amount so apportioned the county by the State. Such levy and appropriation then becomes a part of the pike repair fund of the several townships, and shall be apportioned according to the amount of the fund arising in each township, and the township trustees shall apply the fund as other park repair funds are applied.

Some years ago while in New Jersey I looked over what are known as the Telford roads, in order that we might apply that principle to our park system

in the city of Cleveland. I then had the opportunity of conversing with some of the farmers in and about Elizabeth, New Jersey. I am not certain about this, but I believe in that road law the farmers bore nearly all the expense. That is my recollection, although as I say I am not certain about it. In any event the farmers were vigorously opposed to the construction of roads under that law because of the heavy tax.

Under our Ohio law, as you will observe, the tax is to be a light one as the work goes forward.

I remember in conversation with the different farmers in that section of New Jersey, a conversation with one in particular, after these roads had been in operation. This was with a farmer who raised hay for the market at Elizabeth. He told me that he had bitterly opposed the construction of the roads and had even organized the people in his neighborhood against the building of these roads on account of the heavy tax. He said the practical result had been that while he hauled his hay to Elizabeth-some miles away-in time of bad roads he could only haul one load a day, but since the construction of the roads he hauled three; and he further said that while he had been taxed, yet his farm was worth so much an acre and "it is now worth double the amount it was at that time, by reason of the crops being of greater value," which was accounted for by the fact that he was able to obtain more on account of obtaining a market at the proper time.

Of course we all appreciate that in Ohio, with a clay soil in many parts of the State, one of the great iniquities has been bad roads in the spring of the year, and especially is this so in the Western Reserve, in the part from which I come. In the villages and cities of the State, at certain times of the year, this creates a demand for farmers' products which at that time can not be promptly delivered, although prices are then higher; and it further results when roads are good of these same products being brought in all together, thus lowering the prices for his crops and securing the farmer the worst of the deal. I, therefore, believe that the good roads problem is one of the most important problems facing the agricultural interests of the State; and it is also of interest to the general public of the State.

The commissioner begins his work next month. He will be free to look over the State and to lay out his plans with the appropriations made, in order that when the next legislature meets an adequate appropriation may be made and this work carried forward and with great energy during all the succeeding years, until we shall have a system of good roads throughout the State of Ohio -which I deem a necessity for the welfare, both material and social, of the people of the State of Ohio. I regard this as a very important question.

In his last great speech at Buffalo, President McKinley said: "Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the conveyance to carry it to the buyer." I have felt that the people of the State have not fully appreciated what it would mean to them to establish this system of good roads throughout the State of Ohio. I am speaking of this somewhat at length because I would like the farmers of the State of Ohio to study this measure with care-the bill that has been enacted. If this measure requires changes those changes should be suggested to the next legislature.

I congratulate you upon the fact that the agricultural interests of the State of Ohio have been given larger appropriations than have been made by any previous legislature. The appropriations that have been made in the interest of agriculture have been wisely used in all instances; so far as I am able to learn in looking over the records, I do not find in any instance where there has been a waste of money appropriated for the advancement of these interests.

« AnteriorContinuar »