So you see, Mr. President, I am handicapped from the start. If I've got to tell a story I will have to tell a German story, not an Irish story.

It seems that in the Old Country many years ago a couple of young men were born and brought up in the same neighborhood, - in the same locality and they had heard so much of America. I am going to tell these young men's names. One was Pat Murphy and the other was Michael O'Toole (Applause). They decided they would save up money enough to come to America, which they did. Before they left Old Ireland - I should have said Germany (laughter) they arranged that they should come on the same ship; and they landed together in the city of New York. And they agreed among themselves that wherever they got employment,— that wherever one got employment, the other must. And so they lived up to the agreement. They finally got jobs places to work together. Time ran along and, as the years rolled by these young men began to think of the future life; and Pat says to Mike one day, "When we get to Heaven, we must not fail to meet in that harbor." Eventually Mike died and went to the promised land. As the story goes, he waited and waited for Pat Murphy to come and be with him.

In the course of a few years Pat Murphy died; he didn't go to the promised land; he went to what they call Hades. He arrived in Hades but he didn't find his friend Mike. He was lost; he was disappointed. Finally, he made an inquiry one day, and he asked the devil if Mike O'Toole was down there. The devil said "No." Pat said that was funny; they promised to meet there. "Mr. Devil, could I please use your telephone to call my friend Mike?" The devil said, "Yes." So he got the devil's telephone and called up the other country, and he got Mike on the telephone. Mike was terribly disappointed at Pat's having to be down there in Hades, as he had made him promise to meet him in the promised land. Finally Pat says to Mike, "What are you doing over there?" "I am working very hard." "How is that?" Mike says, "There are so few of us here I have to work sixteen hours a day." "What are you doing?" "Polishing up the sun, dusting off the moon and hanging up the stars." "You have a hard job," said Pat. "What are you doing down there?" asked Mike. "I have

an easy job; there's so many of us down here, there isn't much work to do." "What are you doing?" "All I have to do is to put on a shovel of coal in the furnace once a day." (Applause.)

Mr. President, by request of your local committee, I have been asked to welcome you to our county. It may be of interest to many of you, who are assembled here to-day, when I say that Jefferson county is the tenth county in the United States in the total amount of her products. You will see from this that Jefferson county, with her many industries and agricultural products, is the tenth county in the United States.

From an agricultural and dairy standpoint Jefferson county leads all other counties of this State with the cheese and the fine timothy hay, which is second to none in all our eastern markets. Our farmers are selling $1,000,000 worth of hay annually, in addition to the large amount of hay which it requires to winter 70,000 dairy cows, and several thousand horses that our farmers keep from year to year.

We have thirteen milk stations in our county that send milk to New York City every day in the year, and this milk would make 7,000,000 pounds of cheese per annum, worth, at our present prices, $800,000. We also have several creameries in the county; the Rosemary of Antwerp-I should have said Adams being the largest in the State; we also have at Antwerp the Beaumont cheese factory that receives in the flush of the season over 50,000 pounds of milk per day; this is made up into fifteen to twenty kinds of fancy (so-called) cheese. We also have fifty limburger cheese factories that have an annual output of $200,000 worth of Dutch cheese. We also have about a hundred American cheese factories with an output of over a million dollars worth of American cheese. The sales of American full cream cheese on our Cheese Board at Watertown are larger than those of any other Cheese Board on the American continent. In fact, we have the largest "cheese board" in the world!

Jefferson county has nineteen banks with a paid up capital and surplus of over $2,000,000 and deposits of about $18,000,000, which is a good barometer of the prosperity of our people and the financial condition of our county.

Our professional men, teachers, clergymen, doctors, lawyers and judges are bright and competent and equal to any the State of

New York can produce. Jefferson county has furnished the United States with J. A. Bronson, a Judge of the United States District Court of the State of Minnesota; also a Governor, and at United States Senator, the late Senator Davis, of Minnesota. Jefferson county has furnished the State of New York with six Judges of the Supreme Court, one Judge of the Court of Appeals. the late Hon. Dennis O'Brien; one Judge of the Court of Claims, the late Hon. W. F. Porter; one Judge of the Appellate Division, the Hon. Pardon C. Williams; one State Engineer and Surveyor, for three terms, the Hon. Edward A. Bond; one Superintendent of Public Instruction, for three terms, the Hon. Charles R. Skinner; one State Assessor, Hon. J. D. Ellis; two candidates for Governor, not elected, and one Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. W. A. Beach; and also one of the best Governors the State of New York has ever had, the late Hon. Roswell P. Flower; a United States Consul to England, the late Colonel A. D. Shaw.

Some United States military heroes have been residents of this county. John Brown was a resident of this county when the war with England in 1812 broke out. Fighting Joe Hooker was formerly a resident of this county. General Ulysses S. Grant was a resident of this county during the few years before he became the hero of Appomattox and President of our great United States.

When we come to the heroes and heroic acts of the rank and file and commissioned officers from lieutenants to colonels we have hundreds of such heroes that went to the Civil War to defend the flag of our country.

In our county is situated the beautiful city of Watertown, which, only a few years ago, was a large village; now it is a thriving city of 30,000 people, with paper mills, machine shops, wagon factories, a brake shop, employing thousands of men, with weekly pay-rolls of $20,000 to $40,000.

Mr. President, you are now near the northern boundary of our county and within two miles of the international line between the United States and Canada, and in the midst of the Thousand Island archipelago, where $20,000,000 are invested in cottages, hotels, parks and boats, the greater part of which vast amount of money is invested within ten miles of this beautiful Thousand Island Park. This park has 700 cottages, and a population during July and August of 10,000 people.

The Thousand Islands are destined to be the greatest summer resort on the American continent; they have the best fishing grounds of the United States and Canada among them.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen.-On behalf of our county, I again welcome you; and, when I say welcome, I voice the sentiment of our great county. We hope your Thirty-ninth Annual Convention will be the best that you have ever held; that your second visit to this great summer resort, the Thousand Islands, will be a pleasant one, and that when you go away from here you will have nothing but the pleasantest recollections of your Thirty-ninth Convention, held at the Thousand Island Park, in 1909. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:

Mr. Grant, Ladies and Gentlemen of Jefferson County. In behalf of the convention I wish to thank you for the hearty reception we have received here. I think you said the "second visit," but, I understand it has been the third time our convention has met here in the past

MR. GRANT:

I stand corrected; I had forgotten.

THE PRESIDENT:

And I think I can safely say for the convention that it is one of the most beautiful spots on the globe.

MR. GRANT:

We will be pleased to see you here every year.

THE PRESIDENT:

I will further state, that I hope in the future we may be able to come here again.

The president then read bis annual ads, as follows'

THE PRESIDENT:

Ladies and Gentlemen.

I regard it as a great honor to be permitted to preside over the deliberations of the County Superin

tendents of the Poor of the State of New York in their annual convention.

I should deem myself to some extent worthy of the honor if I felt capable of introducing into your deliberations any superior wisdom in relation to the matters before you, or any superior method of dealing with the problems with which you have to contend. Acknowledging my inability in this respect, I shall have to ask your kind sympathy in the discharge of my duties as president, and rely upon your generosity and kindness to help carry along the work of the convention, so that it may properly take its place for beneficial and practical interest and for pleasant associations, with those that have gone before.

This thirty-ninth annual convention finds the work in which we are engaged moving along more systematically, with a better understanding of the questions with which we have to deal and with a better opportunity of dealing with them, than at any time in the past. We may congratulate ourselves that this great problem of dispensing the charity of the State to its indigent inhabitants is gradually being solved with intelligence by practical legislation and experience. Since our last meeting there has been a consolidation of the statutory law of the State of New York extending to and including the poor laws, and it is now easier for us to determine the legal bearings of the subjects with which we have to deal. Many years of legislation upon the question of caring for the poor have placed upon our statute books many laws that were not easily reconciled and that sometimes led to misunderstanding and confusion. All this has been simplified in a brief and comprehensive statement of the Poor Laws adopted by the State Legislature, and one of the greatest bugbears of the county superintendent has to some extent been removed.

The last Legislature also provided for the selection of a county auditing officer, who shall have general jurisdiction as boards of supervisors now have over county audits. This is a change that, if properly worked out in the larger counties, should be a very welcome one to the county superintendent. Being compelled as he is now to anticipate his expenses a year in advance, and being held down to that estimate, which it is not possible to accurately forecast, the county superintendent often finds himself without