No. 7. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 453 



troublo here in America has been that we have found this policy 

 too hard. We have been trying to malvc something that the other 

 fellow has not got — something that would give us the advantage; so 

 we have failed both ways. At the old Quaker Sunday-school that 

 I attended when 1 was a boy, 1 learned a text: "He that saveth his 

 life shall lose it; he that loseth his life for My sake will hud it." 



I don't intend to preach a sermon this nioriiiug, I simply want to 

 apply it. When we ge out and try to get something for nothing — 

 when we chase the dollar so hard that we forget the quality of our 

 work, instead of getting the dollar we are chasing, we lose it. We 

 lose our life when we are trying to save it. We think only of the 

 dollar, and how to make it, and allow our work to become careless, 

 and we lose both. When a man says "I -am going to do good work; 

 I am going to do the best I can; I am going to work at something 

 that should be donej and do it well," the pay will come. That has 

 been my observation. It is one of the most important economic 

 principles I was able to develop at Harvard, ^nd later in teaching 

 Economics, but even better than college teaching, is the teaching 

 that I have gotten on the farm, working out this principle. I have 

 been on the farm, working out these things for the dollar, and also 

 for the results, and frOiU my experience I can say that the man who 

 will set a high standard, and do the work the best that it can be 

 done, is more likely to get good results and profits, than the man 

 who goes out to get jjroflts and neglect the quality of his work. 



Nov^, there is another thinj'. 1 want to say before I begin, and that 

 is: I cannot boast of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, but I can trace 

 back to Pennsylvania Quaker ancestry for about two hundred 

 years — 



SECRETARY CRPCCHFIEI.D: W^e are proud of both lines. 



Now, I will begip. The Agricultural Guild was organized about 

 a year ago at the Jniversity of Chicago. It is simply an attempt 

 to co-ordinate the forces now at work for the agricultural educa- 

 tion and betterment. The great development of this nation for the 

 last half century, and particularly within the last, say, ten years, 

 has come about through a better organization of the educational 

 forces. The business methods which have been applied in the build- 

 ing of large railroads, starting with little lines disconnected lines, 

 joined together to make better service possible, have not been ap- 

 plied to agriculture. Eleven lines were joined together to make 

 the New York Central lines, and thousands of smaller lines all over 

 the country united to make a better service possible and they low- 

 ered freight rates from 3c per ton mile to fc per ton mile — a com- 

 bination and orijanization which was productive of great good to 

 manufacturers, and eliminated the enormous freight rates due to 

 competition. I am not here to talk about combinations, but I will 

 say just one word about that great American problem — not the 

 greatest. We have spent much energy in attacking that problent 

 in the wrong way. We have tried to stop it and prevent combina- 

 tion. We have tried to maintain the old, individual competitive 

 system, the day of which has passed. We will never again see the 



