10 The Bulletin. 



mental ideals come only by a careful and diligent study of tlie factors 

 controlling the development of any chosen vocation. 



It means little to the farmer that farm products be high-priced if 

 his profits are consumed in hauling them to market. It meians 

 little to the farmer to own land capable of producing 50 bushels of corn 

 to the acre if his store of knowledge allows him to gather but 10 bushels 

 from the acre. We must, therefore, have good roads, and good schools 

 offering efficient agricultural instruction. • But good roads and good 

 schools alone will not make us a great agricultural state. These are but 

 the tools with which Ave work. Nothing is further from the truth than 

 the old adage that "knowledge is power." Knowledge is not power. It 

 never has been. Power comes only as a result of an application of 

 energy to knowledge. Every one has seen the walking encyclopedia 

 M^hose brain is surcharged with facts but who never exerts any influence 

 in his community. Every one has also seen 'the man of unbounded 

 energy who dicki't know what he wanted and had to have it — nervous, 

 working, watching — always in a hurry and never getting anywhere; but 

 when you find a man or woman possessed of great energy with an 

 abundance of knowledge to direct it, you find a person who is a power 

 in the land. There is not one volt more electro-motive force in the 

 world today than there was 10,000 years ago, when it was manifested 

 only in the thunderbolt and in the destructive shafts of lightning; but 

 since the invention of the electric motor, even the cobbler in his shop 

 uses the lightning as a beast of burden. The motor does not generate 

 the power, neither does the electric current generate the power; but join 

 the two together and every wheel in the industrial world may be pro- 

 pelled by the force. So it is with the farmer. When he has gained 

 sufficient knowledge to give proper direction to his energy he will be 

 proud to show us his fields of waving grain and his herds of fat cattle. 

 Power, then, is energized knowledge. 



The North Carolina farmer has always had the energy, and within 

 the last ten years he has, at a very rapid rate, been acquiring the knowl- 

 edge. Twenty years ago the book farmer was looked upon as an 

 idealist without practical ability. But conditions have changed. Since 

 then not only have the farmers of North Carolina gone on record as 

 favoring book farming, but have built schools and colleges for agri- 

 cultural instruction, and our General Assemblies have passed laws put- 

 ting agriculture into every public school in the State. At present the 

 State Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, the A. and M. College, the State University, the State 

 high schools, and practically every public school in the State are com- 

 bining their efforts to dispel the mists from the eyes of the one man 

 upon whose success the welfare of the entire State depends. Not only 

 so, but there is a number of organizations among the farmers them- 

 selves that give promise of doing more to put farming in North Caro- 

 lina on a sound business and scientific basis than any other agencies 

 that have ever existed within our borders. 



