230 BOAKD OF AGRICULTUKE. 



the poisition that nowhere else on earth are standards so safe as here, 

 where trained men give their lives to the careful study of human expei-i- 

 ence in the line of scientific knowledge; not only that, but every one of 

 these colleges is connected with an experiment station, provided Avith 

 funds and trained investigators for further research into unknown fields. 

 Can it be possible that anywhere else there is a force at work so potent 

 as the college and station for the conservative yet rapid development of 

 this great industry? 



And yet it seems to me that we have all along overlooked the ulti- 

 mate object that must be reckoned with. To no other force or individual 

 does agriculture appeal with sucli tremendous significance as to the man 

 who earns his own bread and butter and supports tlie life of his family 

 by what he is able to get out of the soil. He knows agricultural condi- 

 tions as no one else can know them. It is bone, blood and sinew to him, and 

 I submit the proposition that agricultui'e has a deeper meaning to this 

 man that lives upon the land by the labor of his hand and brain than it 

 can possibly have to any other man on earth; and, therefore, not the press, 

 able and powerful tliough it is; not the great exposition, successful though 

 it may be as a public educator; not tlie college, whose business it is to 

 teach the young, nor the experiment station, even though it may extend 

 the boundaries of knowledge far beyond anything attainable by the indi- 

 vidual farmer — it is none of these tliat shall lead the procession that is 

 working for the development of agriculture, but it is the farmer himself, 

 the man who gets his living from the land, the man who walks upon the 

 earth; it is he who realizes as no other man can realize that all flesh is 

 grass. The responsibility is his and lie must accept it. No matter Avhat 

 the press may print, no matter what the colleges may teach, or stations 

 learn, or the expositions exliibit, nothing can be really accomplislied until 

 this man living upon tlie land shall put it into actual operation; this man 

 who is, and from the nature of the case must be, at once the beginning 

 and the end of all real advancement. He is the Alpha and Omega of the 

 whole matter. 



But this individual farmer is equal to the task; there is not enough 

 of him; liis experience is too limited; he may be a fruit grower only, or 

 possibly a cattle producer, and he may spend his life in developing a new 

 kind of strawberry, or a better method of feeding. Therefore, to be ef- 

 fective this individual farmer must be taken collectively and when organ- 

 ized into an association, such as this, there is nothing he can not accom- 

 plish. 



Gentlemen, if any problem in agriculture is now clear to me it is this: 

 That upon associations like yours rests the exclusive responsibility of 

 leadership in the development of agriculture. It is saying nothing against 

 the agricultural press, the exiK)sition, the college, the station or any other 

 of the forces that must labor and whose laborers are all heeded for the 

 final accomplishment of the purpose — it is saying nothing against any of 



