No. 6. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 267 



tiiral College, There was present in the neighborhood of fifty ov 

 a hundred speakers on behalf of the man who lives in the oyen coun- 

 try, and, to cap the climax, the President of the United States came 

 to Lansing and delivered an address on behalf of the man who tills 

 the soil, and I have jotted down, to begin with, a few of the striking 

 sentences in President Roosevelt's address, and by way of opening 

 my address I will read these — a few of the striking and incisive sen- 

 tences: 



"We hear a great deal of the need of protecting our workingmeu 

 against competition with pauper labor. I have very little fear of 

 the competition of pauper labor. The nations with pauper labor 

 are not the formidable industrial comj)etitors of this country. What 

 the American workingman has to fear is the competition of the 

 highly skilled workingman of the countries of greatest industrial 

 efticieney. By the tariff and our immigration laws we can always 

 protect ourselves against the competition of pauper labor here at 

 home; but when we contend for the markets of the world we can 

 get no protection, and shall then find that our most formidable 

 competitors are the nations in which there is the most highly devel- 

 oped industrial skill; and these are the qualities which we must 

 ourselves develop. 



"Progress cannot permanently consist in the abandonment of 

 physical labor, so that it shall represent more and more the work of 

 the trained mind in the trained body. 



"There is but one person whose welfare is as vital to the welfare 

 of the whole country as is that of the wage-earner who does manual 

 labor, and that is the tiller of the soil, the farmer. If there is one 

 lesson taught b}' liistory, it is that the permanent greatness of any 

 State must ultimately depend upon the character of its country popu- 

 lation more than upon anything else. 



"We cannot afford to lose that pre-eminently typical American, 

 the farmer who owns his own farm. 



"Everything should be done to encourage the growth in the open 

 farming country of such institutional and social movements as will 

 meet the demand of the best type of farmers. There" should be 

 libraries, assembly halls, social organizations of all kinds. The 

 school building and the teacher in the school building should, 

 throughout The country districts, be of the very highest type, able 

 to fit the boys and girls, not merely to live in, but thoroughly to 

 enjoy and to make the m.ost of the country. The country church 

 must be revived. 



"Nothing in the way of scientific work can ever take the place of 

 business management on a farm. 



"But much has been accomplished by the growth of what is broad- 

 ly designated as agricultural science. This has been developed with 

 remarkable rapidity during the last quarter of a century, and the 

 benefit to agriculture has been great. 



"The prime need must always be for real research, resulting in 

 scientific conclusion of approved soundness. Both the farmer and the 

 Legislature miist beware of invariably demanding immediate re- 

 turns from investments in research efforts. 



"Hitherto agricultural research, instruction atsd agitation have 

 been directed almost exclusively toward the production of wealth 



