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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The quality and standing of any honorable calling can only be measured by the character of the men and women engaged in it. No occupation affords better opportunity for mental, moral and social advancement than agriculture.
In the primitive days crude implements and primitive methods were used in cultivating the soil. The exhibit here at Jackson Park, of agricultural machinery, in quality, in artistic presentation and in infinite variety, proves that we live in an age of invention and of application of ideas to the interests of humanity, whereby agriculture is made less laborious, more pleasant, more refined and remunerative. Progress is illustrated. The bent stick and wooden plow is replaced by magnificent steel plows; the sickle by the powerful reapers and binders, and we are led to believe that in the near future electricity will be used to draw agriculture onward. With the progress before us may we not expect, in the world’s tomorrow, to see the golden era in which the alchemist’s dream is more than realized, and some of the latent forces of nature utilized in the fertilization of the soil, and that our statesmen will see the air turned into gold and silver.