No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 215 



I shall point out, for the past thirty to forty years the growth of 

 our country in population has been paralleled by the growth of the 

 farm area of the country. This has been possible through the open- 

 ing of the cheap government lands of the West to settlement and 

 their utilization for the production of farm crops to feed not only 

 our own people but the starving of nations across the seas. 



The cattle ranches have given way to cotton patches in the great 

 Southwest. The free and open ranges of the West have been driven 

 back by the advance of the farmer pioneer and his plow and in their 

 place have come the corn fields and the wheat fields. \Vhere the 

 liulTalo, proud possessor of the prairie, herded unmolested not so 

 man^' j-ears ago we now have American farm homes, the pride and 

 stability of the nation. The desert lands of the far west have 

 bloomed with food ]3i'0<iucts for both man and beast under the 

 magic influence of water supplied by irrigation. The semi-arid 

 section of our country has also been made to contribute its mite 

 in producing food supplied for our people by the introduction of 

 new crops and new systems of soil management adapted to the soils 

 and climatic conditions there existing. The Great American Des- 

 ert, known to the past generation, has been crowded from the map 

 by the advance of scientific agriculture. Besides feeding our own 

 people bounteously, ''as no other people ever before were fed," the 

 soil contributed during the fiscal year ending June HO, 1907, a sur- 

 plus of products lor export valued at the stupendous sum of |1,- 

 05.5,000,000 or a balance of trade in farm products alone in our 

 favor of nearly a half billion dollars, the imports for the year being 

 valued at |G27,000,000. During the past eighteen years, the soil 

 has never failed to produce a surplus large enough to provide for 

 a balance of trade in our favor and the aggregate amount of these 

 balances amounts to ^6,500, 000,000, while during the same period 

 of time our international trade in other commodities has resulted in 

 an adverse balance amounting to 1456,000,000. Thus since 1890, we 

 can not only thank the soil for preventing us from becoming a 

 debtor nation, but also thank it for making us a creditor in the com- 

 merce between the nations of the world to the amount of over .$6,- 

 000,000,000. 



Kegardless of our great manufacturing interests — and they are 

 great indeed— and the large export trade which they maintain, were 

 it not for the surplus products derived from our soil resources, the 

 favorable balance of trade, in which we so justly pride ourselves, 

 would be entirely wiped out and we would become a debtor in our 

 international commerce. Can we in justice to ourselves and our 

 posterity afford to let this happen? The question confronting us 

 today is: shall we endeavor to maintain our position as a creditor 

 nalion in the markets of the world or shall we content ourselves 

 with producing from the resources bf our soils only enough to feed 

 and clothe our own people, leaving the balance of trade to the manu- 

 facturing interests? The experiences of the past go to show that 

 this would not be a safe thing to do, and I believe that this ([ues- 

 tion can and will be answered by the farmer and the soil. No great 

 crisis has developed in the past, but the American farmer has borne 

 his share and even more than his share and no great need has been 

 required of the soil but it has responded bounteously to intelligent 



