Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 51 



When I see any assemblage of farmers, I always think of 

 the old fable that all of you have read or heard many times, of 

 the peasant who thought he was going to die, and called his two 

 sons to his bedside and said, "I am about to die, and I am go- 

 ing to leave to you the little plot of ground behind the house, the 

 vineyard. In that vineyard is buried a great treasure. All you 

 need do is to dig for it, and you may find it." And he passed away, 

 and the young men, strong of arm, set about to find the treasure, 

 the pot of gold, and they dug the vineyard over most carefully 

 and failed to find it, and thinking perhaps they had not gone deep 

 enough, they dug again still deeper, and failing again, went still 

 deeper, with the same result, and when they came to the conclu- 

 sion that their father was beside himself at the time he had said 

 these words, and that there was no pot of gold, no treasure buried 

 there, and they went their way. But they came back the next sum- 

 mer, and lo and behold! There was a crop of fruit on their vines 

 such as they had never seen before, and they harvested it, and 

 from that came their pot of gold. It was the treasure that had 

 been buried in that soil, and that was what their father had re- 

 ferred to. And so it is with agriculture. 



Yet, when we begin to think of the mineral wealth of our 

 country, when we begin to survey our wealth, we begin to figure 

 immediately the gold, the iron, the lead, the silver and that class 

 of minerals which have been styled "the precious metals." The 

 truth is, however, that last year's crop mined out of the soil by 

 the farmers of the United States amounted to more than six bil- 

 lion dollars, and was worth more than all the gold and silver mined 

 in America since Columbus discovered it. The truth is that the 

 greatest mineral resources of this country is the mineral plant food 

 within its soil. The greatest mines are our farms, the greatest 

 miners are the farmers themselves. It is the only mining business 

 that is permanent; it is the only business that is basic. Our silver 

 mines work out and the cities based upon them pass away from 

 the earth; but the cities, the universities, the churches built upon 

 agriculture, stand ; they are permanent ; they are as everlasting as 

 the hills themselves, provided the farmer who mines that soil mines 

 it intelligently, appreciates its own limitations, and does not 

 waste its resources. (Applause.) 



As illustrative of this very basic industry, let me cite another 

 illustration. Just a few days ago I happened to be in conference 

 with a gentleman who represents great millions of accumulated 

 wealth of the eastern portion of the country, which had been 



