SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



and invaluable research work to its credit, in the main little has been 

 done until recently toward putting the results of the work of the de- 

 partment's scientific men before the farmer properly condensed, cor- 

 related, and couched in terms easily understood. Fewer than a dozen 

 years ago the Department of Agriculture was almost as far removed 

 from actual contact with the masses of our farmers as the State Depart- 

 ment or the Coast and Geodetic Survey. No wide-spread, continuous, 

 and systematic effort has yet been made to carry agricultural education 

 to the farmer by word of mouth or by demonstration; the Office of 

 Farm Management was a minor appendage of one of the older bureaus; 

 the publications of the department were lucky if they escaped being 

 still-born, so little was the effort made to popularize them and to interest 

 the farmers in them by means of the press. It is difficult to realize that 

 a major government department, established for the specific purpose of 

 informing the people, spending millions of dollars of the people's money 

 every year for research work, could ever have been so indifferent to the 

 practical application of the results of its research as the Department of 

 Agriculture seemed to be until a few years ago. Yet one has only to 

 glance over the current list of farmers' bulletins to find evidence of that 

 seeming indifference. 



Many of the so-called farmers' bulletins are really technical papers. 

 Much of the information published on vitally important practical prob- 

 lems is scattered about in so many bulletins as to be entirely un-get-at- 

 able by the average farmer. The teachings of the department with 

 regard to a number of the most vital farm problems have not been prop- 

 erly differentiated regionally and special bulletins prepared for the dif- 

 ferent important agricultural regions in the United States. Some of the 

 most fundamental features of everyday farming have been almost en- 

 tirely ignored. . . . 



It is obvious that in the near future the farmers are going to do co- 

 operatively a number of things which to-day are done for them by the 

 business men of the towns. The movement in this direction is inevitable 

 and irresistible. It is every day gaining in momentum. The wise business 

 man will recognize this fact and trim his sails accordingly. If he is en- 

 gaged in an elevator business or a creamery business, and it becomes 

 apparent that the farmers of the neighborhood are about to assume that 

 function of the community, he will do well to say frankly to them: "If 

 you think you can handle this business better and more economically 

 than I can, I will sell it to you in a friendly way. There are plenty of 

 other places where I can utilize my capital and trained business ability 

 advantageously." That will be good business, for it is folly to fight the 

 inevitable. 



If the business men will take this attitude, they and the farmers will 

 prosper in the future as neither of them has prospered in the past, and 

 the entire nation will prosper with them. I have spoken to bodies of 

 business men in a number of our States, and I find that more and more 

 this reasonable and sympathetic spirit is gaining headway among them. 

 They recognize that if the American people pull together, there will be 

 prosperity enough to go around; but that if we squabble and squirm, each 



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