260 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



the best interests of agriculture at large. That is simply a sugges- 

 tion in passing. Now I don't want you, dear brother, to make any 

 motion on that. 



Now I want to say something more if you will allowed me: First, 

 I have an important series of conferences up on the Hill in a very 

 few minutes and shall be obliged to vacate the Chair and ask tlie 

 man who really ought to preside to come into his own; but before 

 doing that I just want to say a word or two to you. In the first 

 place, I should like you to read with considerable care what I said 

 on Tuesday last on the subject of agriculture and make that, if you 

 please, at some time during your session, the basis of some discus- 

 sion here. If what I have said there is not the thing that ought to 

 be said I trust you will be frank enough to tell me so, because I 

 have no pride in the language and no pride in the thought expressed 

 there whatever. What I honestly tried to do was to say to the 

 people of Pennsylvania that the agricultural interests of this Com- 

 monwealth are so vital to its whole population that everything that 

 the wisdom and the experience of our people could do should be 

 brought to bear in the solving of the agricultural problems of Penn- 

 sylvania. 



As you very well know, we have had a growth of agricultural in- 

 terest. Legislature after Legislature has created department after 

 department. I confess to you very frankly that I don't know what 

 these different departments do. I don't know how many of them 

 tramp on each other's toes. I don't know how many of them leave 

 wide gaps of untouched service between their different functions. 

 Perhaps you don't know, but this I know, that first of all we should 

 make a clear demarkation between the teaching functions in agricul- 

 tural administration and the purely administrative functions in 

 agricultural education, and having drawn that line we should turn 

 to each field of endeavor and organize it into a scientific and efficient 

 service to the farmers of Pennsylvania. If there is a duplication of 

 clerical effort to a conflict of clerical services, let us eliminate that. 

 We are not here to create offices and to take care of a lot of political 

 accidents. We are here to make the money from the Treasury of 

 this Commonwealth reach back into the farm and bring a larger 

 crop of food from the soil to the whole people of Pennsylvania. (Ap- 

 plause). 



Now you see, therefore, that this thing requires at every step, the 

 most careful, the most accurate, the most considerate attention on 

 the part of all of you who, by law, have to do with this problem 

 and see whether we cannot work out a program of eificient adminis- 

 tration and efficient instruction that will actually meet in the largest 

 way and at the least cost to the people, the interests that we all have 

 at heart. Now you have heard one report read here; you will hear 

 others. Do you think it is a satisfactory showing, good as it was, 

 aside from one or t^'^o problems? We are getting about $18 or $20 

 for an acre of Pennsylvania soil. Is that a fair return? Count out 

 of that the cost of living, the cost of production of that amount of 

 foodstuff, and see what a pittance remains. I make the definite 

 statement that it is easily within the reach of the people of this 

 State to double the output of each acre in Pennsylvania in ten years 

 if we want to do it. Now take your pencils and figure what it would 

 mean to the farmers of Pennsylvania ; what it would mean to the in- 



