ADDRESS BY COL. WM. B. SLAUGHTER.

(Delivered on the Fair Grounds in the village of Darlington.)

Mr. President and Gentlemen Farmers: I have been invited to address you on the present occasion. Nothing has been said on the subject of the address, and I have been somewhat at a loss to select one best suited to my capacity, and to your taste. Politics is the popular theme; but it is one for which I have no taste, and of which I have very little knowledge. Politics leads to demagogism, which I thoroughly despise. I use the term politics in the common acceptation of the term, not in the higher and purer sense, which implies a knowledge of the science or policies of government; subjects which have occupied the minds of the greatest thinkers in every age. I had special reference to the arts of the intriguers, the meddlers, the busy-bodies, who are ever ready to attend to everybody's business for a fee, whose maxim is "that the end justifies the means." This class of politicians are rarely found among the farmers, whose honesty, industry, prudence and economy are at war with their whole system. The farmer class constitutes the surest basis of all good government. They combine in a higher degree the elements of all great character, than any other class, to wit: honesty of purpose, practical common sense, self-knowledge and self government. While they are honorably and profitably occupied, they have leisure for thought, and thought is the source of all true greatness.

I presume the subject of farming would be most interesting to you, as it is your occupation and means of living. I understand there are two kinds of farming, book farming and plow and hoe farming. I never studied book farming, and therefore cannot give you the various theories in regard to the seeds suited to the climate, soil and time of planting; the mode of cultivating the land, whether by deep or shallow plowing; whether it should be done in the fall or spring, and whether the other thousand things in and about a farm should be done in this way or that. I have tried farming with the hoe and the plow, in three different states, and failed in all. First, by losing the crops by droughts, floods, bugs, and general bad management; and, secondly, by running in debt and

mortgaging the farm, and by being sold out under a foreclosure. I know of but one mode by which I can teach you on the subject of farming, and that is by giving you a minute detail of all the particulars of my system, and then advise you to adopt the opposite in every particular. There is a right way and a wrong way; if mine was all wrong, the opposite must be all right.

Although I am not a model farmer, either in theory or in practice, I can point you to one of whom you have all heard more or less, and whom if you will imitate in that particular as well as in many others, you will be better citizens and better men. None of you have ever seen the farmer to whom I allude, yet you honor his name, and venerate his memory. He is generally called the father of his country, but his family name is George Washington. Yet to this honest farmer we are indebted for our independence, for our freedom, for our civilization; all hail to George Washington, hero, patriot, sage and farmer.

"Lordlings may flourish and may fade,

A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But the honest farmers, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

TOBACCO GROWERS' CONVENTION.

EDGERTON, Wis., March 24, 1880.

Pursuant to call, the tobacco growers of Wisconsin met at Union Hall, in Edgerton, March 24, 1880, at 1 o'clock P. M. Hon. S. L. Lord was chosen chairman, and G. H. Rumrill secretary.

On motion of W. H. Tripp, a committee of five, on organization, was appointed by the chair, as follows: W. H. Tripp, chairman; R. T. Powell, E. R. Squires, W. S. Follansbee and Geo. Coon.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE.

The committee appointed by the chair for the purpose of organizing a tobacco growers' association, to be called and known as "The Wisconsin Tobacco Growers' Association," to be officered

as follows: a president, four vice-presidents, a recording secretary, corresponding secretary, and treasurer.

We also recommend the above officers be this day elected, who shall be authorized to prepare and present a constitution and bylaws for the governing of the same, and present them to a meeting of said association for their approval; said meeting to be called as soon as convenient.

W. H. TRIPP, Chairman.

On motion, the report of the committee was accepted and adopted.

On motion, the following officers were elected:

President-S. L. Lord.

Vice Presidents—R. T. Powell, T. J. Atwood, I. Phillips, J. D. Whittet.

Recording Secretary-E. R. Squires.

Corresponding Secretary-G. H. Rumrill.

On motion, the association adjourned until March 31, 1880, at 2 o'clock P. M., at Union Hall.

G. H. RUMRILL, Secretary.

S. L. LORD, Chairman.

SPECIAL SESSION.

EDGERTON, Wis., March 31-2 P. M.

The association met in special session pursuant to adjourn ment, and was called to order by the president, Hon. S. L. Lord in the chair.

The minutes of the previous meeting were read by the secretary, who then read the report of the standing committee on constitution and by-laws. The report was accepted, and on motion of T. J. Atwood, the meeting proceeded to vote upon the adoption of the constitution and by-laws, by sections and articles. The articles were voted upon separately and adopted. Article III, providing an annual membership fee of one dollar, and for life memberships five dollars.

On motion, the first Thursday after the first day of January in

each year, was fixed as the time for holding the annual meetings of the association, for the election of officers, general discussions, exhibition of tobacco, etc.

On motion, "Jefferson's Manual" was adopted as a guide for meetings of the association.

Gen. Geo. E. Bryant, secretary of the State Agricultual Society, then said:

Tobacco is the parent of American slavery. To cultivate it, the curly-headed, white-eyed, black-skinned men of Africa were brought to the shores of the newly discovered America, as early as 1620, by an enterprising Dutchman at Jamestown, Va., that the good old Virginia leaf might be planted, hilled, transplanted, wormed, hoed, ploughed, topped, suckered, cut, strung, stripped and cased with ease and profit.

Our fathers planted the seeds of that peculiar institution which grew and flourished like unto its propagator, a healthy tobacco plant upon virgin soil, until it spread across the continent, and well nigh destroyed the greatest republic the world ever saw. Bad as was the slavery of the black man, the slavery of the snuffing, smoking, chewing black and white men and women to this profitable to be grown sun plant of America, is infinitely worse.

Tobacco is an American institution. In 1492, when Columbus discovered America, he found the natives using tobacco. So in Virginia, in 1585, the natives smoked it in clay pipes, just as white men do in 1880. James I, of England, called it a damning and wicked practice, but his subjects went on raising, selling, smoking and chewing, as mankind will probably do to the end of time.

Tobacco takes its name from Tabaco, a place in Yucatan. It has no botanical meaning; it is historically an American production, and was unknown to the people of Europe previous to the discovery of America. The noble red man used it as a means of producing intoxication, the same as his white brothers used the "water of life," obtained by distilling, fermenting, infusion of barley, rye, wheat, oats, and so forth.

The chemical composition of the plant is very remarkable, and worthy of the study of present growers. Nicotine, to which all

the ill effects of tobacco are due, is a deadly poison. The name came from John Nicot, a French embassador, who introduced the plant into Europe. It also contains acids, resins, and volatile salts. Slaves were imported to increase its production, which they did, to the ruin of the soil. As a farm product, it has destroyed the value of more land than all other crops put together.

The strength of tobacco is determined by the quantity of nicotine; the flavor by the oils and resins. These cost nothing, as they come from the air; but the beautiful white ash that is dropped from your burning cigar is made up from your farm capital, and can never be replaced; and it is because the proportion of ash is so great, that the crop is so exhaustive. The roots give seven per cent., the stems sixteen, the leaves twenty to twenty-five per cent. of ash. As the leaves are the great bulk of the crop, the taking from the soil is correspondingly great. One thousand pounds of tobacco takes on an average two hundred pounds of ash; two thousand pounds of tobacco, a good crop for an acre, would take four hundred pounds of ash. A crop of wheat at thirty bushels to the acre would take less than forty pounds of ash from your farm. So, you see, eleven crops of wheat is no more exhaustive than one crop of tobacco; and if Wisconsin has been wheated to death, there is some danger, I submit, of this fairest of lands in the valley of the Rock becoming, like some of the soil in old Virginia, too poor to raise white beans. Take any tobacco district, and, starting at nothing, the production mounts rapidly to a maximum, turns the corner, and never regains its higher figure. Land can only bear maximum crops of tobacco a short time, and when the decline comes, it comes rapidly.

The experience of the lesson should teach you to put back on the land all you can of the kind you take off; hence your tobacco stems, and all the leavings about your sheds, should be put back on the land from whence it came. Use all the manure you can get! The best animal manure for tobacco is that of sheep. Use guano, at the rate of 400 lbs. per acre, two or three bushels of salt, and be sure and put on the land the accumulation from your stoves, as the ash taken from your soil and carried off in the leaves, contains a great amount of potash salts.