No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 221 



fields, many soils are giving poor yields and we hear the old 

 familiar cry of "bad wet season." Much of our agricultural domain, 

 many of our soils, would be beneficial by underdrainage aside from 

 the problem of swamp drainage to remove the surface water just 

 mentioned. 1 need not dwell on these points or speak of the prac- 

 tical benefit to be gained more than to say that the farmers would 

 be many times repaid in dollars and cents by the drainage of 

 swampy areas to remove excesses and accumulations of surface 

 water and underdrainage to remove excesses of water within the 

 soil itself, the former being inimical to plants having an agricul- 

 tural value and the latter alarmingly injurious to them. 



Then, too, there is on almost every farm some waste land along 

 an old fence where a hedge row of brush has grown, some more 

 around old stone piles and in various places. We have to pay 

 taxes on all this land whether we use it for profitable crops or 

 for the growth of useless brush which afford only a harbor for ver- 

 min and insect pests. The cleaning out and utilization of all these 

 places would not only result in an increase in our crop yields, but 

 in destroying the breeding places and shelter of some of the most 

 troublesome and destructive of our pests. This, too, would also 

 pay in the very looks of things to say nothing of financial returns. 



There is just one more point on which I wish to touch. At first 

 thought it may seem to you that it has but little bearing on the 

 subject of soil resources, but I believe, and I think you will agree 

 with me after a moments consideration, that it is extremely im- 

 portant and of vital interest to the welfare of the state and nation 

 and has a direct bearing on the utilization of the soil resources. 

 This is the subject of the education of our boys and girls. In 

 the past, practically all of the education of our young people, even 

 in our country schools, has been away from the soil, away from the 

 farm, instead of toward it, and not all of this kind of teaching has 

 been done in the schoolroom. Much of it has been done on the 

 farm in our own homes by making a drudge of the boy or girl 

 and thoughtlessly not allowing him to take any interest in the 

 farm work except to do more of it. Some of it has been done at 

 our own firesides when we have complained about our calling, when 

 we have been the ''bear on the market." This has been done when 

 no other calling, no other business on earth could stand the busi- 

 ness methods employed by most farmers and thrive. Yet we envy 

 the merchant, the mechanic, and the manufacturer when all the 

 time our own business is the safest, the pleasantest and the most 

 independent business in the world. And then after complaining 

 about our business we sometimes wonder why the boys leave the 

 farm and go to the city. I do not wonder at it at all. I was 

 a farm boy myself not so very long ago and I have seen and heard 

 all these things and know their influence. One family T knew in 

 my boyhood consisted of six boys and one girl. Every one of these 

 boys left home and the farm the very day they were of age and 

 only one of them is now farming, and no one could blame them for 

 Leaving. They never knew any of the beauties of farm life, the 

 only side of it they were ever taught was the work side. Again, 

 when I go back to my old home there is one of the most prosperous 

 of the small farmers of the whole county who tells m'e that farming 



