THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Dynamic Geographer 



By FRANK BUFFINGTON VROOMAN, F, R, G. S, 

 (Continued) 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



BEHIND the advent of that political 

 party which Mr. Roosevelt repre- 

 sents, and through which he has 

 done so much to develop the principles 

 of Alexander Hamilton, both exten- 

 sively and intensively, lie in the back- 

 ground of the ages the swarming mil- 

 lions of those who, without hope and 

 with little intelligence, have tilled the 

 soil for their own daily bread, and for 

 the daily bread of the world— peasants 

 and yokels for the most part, helpless 

 slaves in the ignorance and in the weak- 

 ness of their individualism. For still 

 other centuries this unfortunate class 

 of men might have ploughed the same 

 dismal furrows, but that just about the 

 time of the Civil War a group of poli- 

 ticians began to deny the infallibility of 

 laisses-fairc and the democracy of indi- 

 vidualism : to overturn that theory of 

 government which is the policeman's 

 theory of government; and to dare the 

 innovation of loaning the resources of 

 the Nation (after freeing one class of 

 slaves) to lift from another bondage 

 another class of slaves, which numbers 

 now in the United States about 6,000,000 

 families of those who till the soil. The 

 new coterie lifted the stigma from labor 

 and made of a railsplitter their first 

 President, wdio himself broke the 

 shackles from 3,000.000 slaves. Lincoln 

 had not been President a year before he 

 signed the Homestead Act of Galusha 

 Grow, which gave the settler a chance 

 over the speculator, which opened up 

 the enormous area of the great West, 

 and gave free homes and farms to mil- 

 612 



lions of men and women who worked 

 with their hands for their daily bread. 

 This idea has since been developed for 

 this lowly and hardworking class of 

 men into the most useful and the most 

 brilliant scientific organization in the 

 world. It has made as well one of the 

 most romantic contributions of human 

 genius to the welfare of the human race. 

 Now the American farmer is no longer 

 a "hayseed." He is a prosperous busi- 

 ness man. In the past, farming was a 

 last resource ; now it is a dignified, sci- 

 entific profession. It is such because 

 we have 2,000 scientific men and trained 

 experts probing the secrets of Nature, 

 roaming the world, solving the prob- 

 lems of soils, waters, seeds, weathers, 

 fertilizers, forests, plants, insects, and 

 farm animals ; the foods, diesases, and 

 adaptabilities of all of them, in their 

 affinities and possible pernuitations. 



It is impossible in any brief space to 

 give even the outlines of the vast work 

 of this department. Its work is divided 

 into many bureaus, and these, in turn, 

 into divisions, the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry alone having thirty-two. The 

 Weather Bureau, c. g., besides main- 

 taining its central office in Washington, 

 with about 200 subordinate stations 

 scattered over the United States, Alaska. 

 Hawaii, and the West Indies, coordi- 

 nates with it. by daily telegraphic re- 

 ports, observations made in Canada on 

 the north, Alexico on the south, in the 

 Azores and Iceland, the western coast 

 of Europe, European and Asiatic Rus- 

 sia, covering every day practically the 

 wdiole of the inhabited portions of the 

 North American Continent, the North 



