there is rather an overproduction of lawyer representation? Don't you think we would have made a mighty good trade if we could have traded off two hundred of that 245, for good, solid, substantial farmers? They did not know what the country wanted. Many of them meant to do the right thing. I am afraid a few were looking after their individual interests. There will always be a few of that class; and I am not going to say it is not right. What I want is to have a few farmers there to look out after their interests, too, and then it will be all right of course. I think if there had been two hundred farmers in the House, and a few in the Senate, that the late-what-do-you-call-it-would not have passed in its present form. There would have been a few changes. We would not have had free wool and protected cloth. We would not have had free wool and protected coal and iron; and there are several other slight changes that would have been made if there had been more farmers there. We were not there.

I went down there to look around on the outside and see what we could do. I found out in a little while that we had n't any business there; I found out that I was n't in it. But who was in it? The sugar trust was in it, the coal trust, the iron and steel trust, they were in it. I will tell you how they do it. The campaign is on. Money is the sinews of war, and they understand it, and they put in a liberal amount on both sides. They give the Democrats a good, cool slice, and then send a fellow around to give the Republicans a lot of it, and whichever side wins, when the time comes, they will come around and remind the successful party that it was their money that won the victory. [Laughter.] That accounts for this legislation. I say we are to blame; we ought to have had some farmers down there looking after our interests. We failed to have them; so we have got left, as they say. Now, I am not discouraged at all. We have been whipped several times; we have come out behind several times; but we will never give it up; we will never give it up so long as we think we are right. Beaten to-day, we will organize our forces and fight again to-morrow, knowing that in the end the right will triumph. [Applause.]

Now it has almost become a disgrace to be a senator or a

representative. I heard the other day of a tramp who called at a house for some bread. The lady was a little satirical and said, "I suspect you will be wanting some sugar on this bread of yours." He was very much grieved and said, “I hope, Madam, you do not take me for a United States senator." [Laughter.]

We want men there who will restore the honor that once clustered around these positions. They say we have not the power. I tell you we have the power. We have the power to right many wrongs; we have the power to help the farmers, to help all classes, because when we are helping ourselves, we are helping others. Elevate farmers and every class will come up

with them.

You are doing a grand work in New Hampshire. It is one of the first states now in the grange column. Brave men and strong, fair and patriotic women rally round our banner from the hills of the Old Granite State. Here is one of the strongholds of our order. Be of good cheer; you are fighting a good fight. Fight on until victory shall crown your efforts. There are those who are not members of our order. I want you to think about this matter; I want you to consider if the time has not come when the farmers are not in need of your help, and ask yourselves the question if there is anybody who ought to be more willing to help than the farmer himself. We want you to think of this; we want you to come over and help us. We don't want you to come alone. We want you to bring that wife that has toiled these many years without the associations to which she was entitled. Bring your sons and daughters. We will make your lives brighter and better. You will do us good and we will do you good, and we will all go on in this grand and glorious work until the time alotted to us for work is ended.

If we have tried to help our brother when he needed help, to encourage him when he needed encouragement, if we have brought happiness to our sister on the farm, will we not, like the old man eloquent when brought face to face with the end of life-will we not say, "This is the end of earth, I am content? [Applause.]

ADDRESS.

BY HON. ALPHA MESSER, VERMONT LECTURER OF THE NATIONAL GRANGE.

WORTHY MASTER, PATRONS AND FRIENDS: In the ten or fifteen minutes allowed to me at this time, I can only say, How do you do? It is about time for you to go home. I will merely say that I am heartily glad to meet you here. I am heartily glad to look into the faces of such an audience as this. There is something inspiring about it. I do not wonder that Colonel Brigham made a grand speech with such an audience before him. I rejoice and am glad and thank God that he put it into the hearts and minds of men in the years that have passed to institute such an organization as they did institute, calling it the Patrons of Husbandry. And I thank God that the people of New Hampshire, as well as the people in other sections of the country, have joined this organization and come together from time to time, for the instruction and encouragement of themselves and the class to which they belong. This is an educational organization. Education does not end in our school-boy and school-girl days. That is too narrow a view to take of education. There is a broader conception of education. Think you that a college diploma or graduation paper from school or college finishes the education of young men and women? That is a great mistake. Education comes all along life's pathway. Our school-boy days, our early years, but open up education before us.

We have then only just stepped upon the threshold. Think you that those noble minds, those giant intellects which stand up as beacon lights upon the great sea of humanity, attained their high distinction, their great power and influence over the hearts and minds of thousands, and tens of thousands, by means of graduation papers from school or college? No. That edu cation, and that power and influence was achieved by hard unremitting labor all along life's pathway. So it must be with you and me; so it must be with our farming population today. The reason we have not got along faster is because we have not kept pace with the wheels of progress which have been revolving so fast. The Grange comes to us as an angel of light and mercy.

It comes to us as the great school, as the farmer's school of the nation, teaching us how to educate ourselves better than we have been educated. The only wonder to me is that so few farmers, in this great country of ours, have joined this organization, and helped themselves and others by their work. There are some men of whom it is said:

They creep into the world to eat and sleep,
And know no reason why they are born,

Save only to consume the corn,

Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish,

And leave behind an empty dish.

There are lots of this class all over the country, who work all day and sleep all night. They are but a very little better, so far as their influence in society is concerned, than an ox or a horse. An ox or a horse is drilled to walk along a furrow. They do it day in and day out. They go to the barn and are fed. They are curried in the morning; the only difference is, the man is not curried-he do`n't comb his hair. [Laughter.]

We have got some of those farmers in our community; but I tell you that there are not half as many of them as there were twenty-five years ago. This organization has been working its way along in educating, elevating, and developing this farming community. They have been coming to the front; and they are coming to the front more in the future than they have in the past. If the farmers are coming to the front it will be only along the line of intelligent, united effort. It will certainly come there. How can we secure this? Can we do it by working singlehanded? Can we do it in our farm homes, on the hill-sides, separated, isolated? We cannot do it thus. It is necessary for us to come together. Colonel Brigham has illustrated that.

It is necessary for us to come together and measure ourselves. What measurement has a man to measure himself by but by men? The only way a man can measure himself is by the standard of other men. Some men may think they are terrible smart, that they are very bright men, that they know more than anybody else. I have seen lots of such men, and so have you. But when they come into the Grange they find that they are not so

smart as they thought they were. They have found themselves wanting in some characteristics essential to citizenship in the truest sense of the word. I do not know of any society in the world that is so good to educate the conceit out of a man or woman as the grange. And I don't care whether he is a farmer or not, if he do n't find some men there just about as smart as he is, or a little smarter, then you need not call me a through-bred Yankee, all wool, a yard wide. [Applause.] That is what organization is doing-it is building up men and women. I do not believe that this organization would have been in existence today if it had not been for the presence and inspiration of women. I thank God that we have an organization which can be inspired by the presence of ladies. What is home without wife and mother, daughter and sister? Grange means home. We have a work to do. Every individual every man, every woman, has something to do. We all have our niche in life. You cannot delegate your work to another man or another woman. Neither can I. We have our own niche to fill, and we can fill it in our grange. We cannot delegate it to anybody else.

When you come to the grange, work-as I said I have got only ten minutes to talk in, and I have got to go like lightning or else stop-when we come into our grange life with its development and growth, we have got something to think of, we have got something to do, and we have got to work. We may think we are doing too much work in our grange organization, that we are helping somebody else more than we ought to; "we are just pulling them along," we say; "we are just carrying that grange on our back, just carrying some of those brothers and sisters; just pulling them right along." What did God make you for anyway if not for work? That is what develops the man and develops the woman. It is what makes New England what it is today. It is work not altogether on the plow-handles, not altogether washing dishes-but it is work along the various lines in which we may be engaged in our various occupations.

If New England ever comes down; if New England ascendency ever comes to take a lower position than it has in the past, it is because our children have not been taught as we