The advantages of the use of tile are manifest on every hand, with these millions of capital invested and thousands of men employed. It has stimulated mining and transportation, and given new impetus to local trade in hundreds of towns and villages in states where factories are established, also business to manufacturers of machinery, and labor to mechanics of other states. From the standpoint of to-day the future looks bright to the farmers, and so it does to all, whether they work with brain or brawn.
Clay is a theme as broad as the world and deep as the earth, universal in all climes and countries. Clays are of many kinds, composed of many elements, and we, as clay manipulators, analyze them practically rather than theoretically, for by prac tice only can we know how to handle our own clay. If we tried theory rather than practice, it would be like book-farming, it would run to theory and the corn would run to weeds.
This great system of farm drainage which is taking the country both north and south, is creating capital by the millions, which will be spent largely in building and beautifying homes for the people ; and we, as brickmakers, are already called upon to tear down and build greater manufactories in order to supply the present and coming demands. Our country is becoming more favorable to human existence, wet lands, bogs and mias matic swamps are giving place to dry and arable fields, and the influence is felt by countless thousands who breathe pure air and enjoy the sanitary benefits as a consequence, and yet this work is only begun. Emerson says, "Tiles are political econo mists, so many young Americans announcing a better era and a day of fat things." Older Americans are also announcing a better era, and the more tiles they use the more fat things they will have.
These annual associations are conducive of much good. We meet for our mutual benefit and to advance our mutual interests. Our vocation is a noble one ; we add wealth and happiness not only to the present, but to generations yet unborn. The pro ducts of our toil in shape of burned clay will stand after we have passed into the great beyond. We build better than we know.
Every clay worker knows the lamentable lack of available knowledge pertaining to the clay business. In our business every one has had to work out his own problem and to over come his own difficulty by his own experience. All know the cost of this in time, money and mental anxiety. The policy a hundred years ago of potters was to keep secret all they knew and not let others profit by their experience. At the Royal potteries in England neither king nor subject could enter those secret workshops, the workmen themselves being sworn to secrecy. But in our day of " reciprocity" and reciprocal knowledge, we are above that ; we have discovered that indi vidual progress in our calling is very much due to interchange of individual experience.
Life is too short for each one of us to learn by long and hard experience that which can be told us by another who has gone through it. We clay workers have enough to do to uncover the unseen, which is constantly rising before us in the shape of costly experience, and should aid each other in cutting corners to success, and then gain time for fitting foundations for the palaces of brick yet to be built by the craft, either with or without straw, whether hard, soft or salmon, glazed or re pressed. Strikes and walking delegates will only be known in history.