196 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



the United States resided in cities of over eight thousand inhabitants. I 

 think not less than one third reside in the towns and cities. This vast 

 multitude of twenty million people draw their sustenance, as do the 

 remaining millions, primarily from the soil, but these twenty million peo- 

 ple in the towns and cities are in no sense producers of the prime necessi- 

 ties of life. I do not wish to pursue this thought further than to say that 

 farming as an occupation should not be made so distasteful and repulsive 

 that our children will flee from it at the first opportunity. Dr. Johnson, a 

 century ago, said that in all Great Britain London was the only place 

 where a civilized man could live. When he returned from the Hebrides, 

 about the only time he ventured into the rural districts, he was more 

 strongly of his opinion than ever. I think if he were to travel to-day 

 among the average ranchers of this State, in some countries I could name, 

 he would question seriously whether any advancement had been made in 

 a hundred years. 



I think a man healthy in body and mind can find more in a diversified 

 farm life, intelligently pursued, than in any other known occupation. Its 

 sense of freedom and independence appeals directly to the natural man; 

 but when you narrow his life down to turning a furrow, planting and har- 

 vesting wheat — or any other one thing, for that matter — and he sees noth- 

 ing but hard, unremitting toil, with no mental development, with no social 

 life, with nothing to arouse in him the love of home and place, he is bound 

 to work under protest, and his boys and girls will fly to the cities as inev- 

 itably as they would fly from famine or disease, and who can blame them? 



A NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT DEMANDED. 



France appropriates $20,000,000 to foster agriculture; Brazil, $12,000,000; 

 Russia, $11,000,000; Austria, $5,500,000. All the great powers provide 

 liberal governmental aid. The United States gives about a half million 

 dollars. 



We want a Department of Agriculture and Labor, with a Secretary at its 

 head who shall rank in our councils with the other Cabinet Ministers. 

 Think of the millions spent to support the War Department in times of 

 peace, and the insignificance of its usefulness when compared with an 

 intelligent expenditure of liberal appropriations in the encouragement and 

 development of rational tillage of the soil. This department should have 

 the administration of the powers of the Government relating to agriculture, 

 mining, manufactures, labor, the sale of the public lands, and such sub- 

 jects as necessarily belong to these matters. 



Statistical bureaus are greatly needed, and the toilers in all branches of 

 human industries should have some means of approach to the government 

 of which they are the chief supporters. 



In the time of Louis XV a system was taught that those only increase 

 the wealth of a country who develop the resources of the earth, such as 

 the products of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. Whether this is 

 broadly true or not, it is so nearly true that it should command wider rec- 

 ognition. The simple truth is that farming, in conventional circles and so 

 called polite life, is not considered exactly respectable. The country bump- 

 kin has always been the butt of his city cousin; our theaters satirize the 

 farmer, and he is never fairly or truthfully represented, any more than is the 

 New Englander by the stage Yankee. The city has never furnished a fair 

 setoff to the country lad until the dude was evolved, and yet I believe the 

 average country boy would exchange places with him. I remember when 

 the unbound sheets of the agricultural reports were sold for waste paper in 



