Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1894 — FARMERS WILL MEET. [ARTICLE]

FARMERS WILL MEET.

SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR NATIONAL CONGRESS. Will Convene In Parkersbnrg. W. Vt., in October Delegates from Twenty-one Different States—Baa No Political Platform and Is Not a Party. Has Great Influence. The Farmers’ National Congress will meet in Parkersburg, \V. Va., Oct. 3, 4,5, and 6 next. Special rates are made by the railways and the hotels. At the annual meetings a wide variety o! subjects is discussed by speakers from all parts of the country, and at the coming meeting addresses will be made by delegates frem twenty-one different Seates. More than thirtyfive States have been lepresented at each of the last five meetings of the congress. The congress met in 1869 at Montgomery, Ala., in 1890 at Council Bluffs, Iowa: in 1891 at Scdalia, Mo.; in 1892 at Lincoln, Neb.; and in 1893 at Savannah, Ga. The congress is composed of one delegate from each Congressional district and two at large from each State, appointed for two years by the Governors of the several States, and one delegate from each State Agricultural College, and one from eacu State Board of Agriculture. Delegates lrom one-half the States are appointed each year. The congress meets in annual session lasting rour days, and has an executive committee, kntwn as the National Board of Agricilture. Th s Board is composed oi one memter from each State and Territory. The Congress has no political platform and does not seek to form a political party. Its delegates come, not as politicians, but as farmers. This is one rea-son why the l armers’ Nati nal Congress is not so well known as the Alliance or Grange. The annual meetings are attended by hundreds of farmers not delegates. These meetings are not unlike the meetings of a national farmers’ institute. The range of subjects is wide and the speakers are from every section of the country. Those who are to deliver addresses at the Parkersburg meeting are from the following States —we give them in the order in which they appear on the official program: District of Columbia, Nebraska, New York, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Kansas, Georgia, California, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, lowa, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maine, West Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, Connecticut. Tho addresses are limited strictly to twenty minutes each. Several of tho speakers are women. Many of the delegates bring their wives and daughters. The officers elected at the ast meeting for the ensuing two years are: Pre ident, Hon. B. F. Clayton, Indianola, Iowa: Vice President, Maj. G. M. Ryals, Savannah. Ga.; Secretary, Hon. John M. Stahl, Quincy, Ill.: First Assistant, Col. W. G. Whidby, Atlanta, Ga.; Second Assistant, tapt. T. J. Appleyard, Sanford, Fla.; Treasurer, Hon. Henry Hayden, Indianola, lowa. The Farmers’ National Congress is working for rural free mail delivery, legislation against adulteration, measures to stamp out infectious live stock diseases, the enlargement of the work of the weather bureau, rural telephone lines, good roads at bearable cost, fuller agricultural statistics and reliable crop estimates, better supported and managed experiment stations, tho rational systematic improvement of waterways, and legislation affecting railways that, while preventing abuses, recognizes that the interests of farmers and of railways are closely rented and interdependent. As each delegate is a man of prominence and influence, known to the Congres man from his district and the Senators from his State, the national legislature usually grants what the Congre s re uests. And tho character of those prominent in it is a guarantee that it will be kept up to its present high position.