468 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



THE AGRICULTURAL STATUS. 



BY PROF. 'L. H. BAILEY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY, M. A. C. CLASS, '82. 

 [Address at Annual Commencement Exercises, June 18, 1897.] 



The agricultural status is a subject of perennial alarm. It is Banquo's 

 ghost of the economic world. It stalks the earth by night and day, and 

 points its fingers to the abandoned farms of the East, the despairing un- 

 rest of the West, the depopulation of the rural communities, to the fall 

 in prices of farm produce, to the contrasting ease of the city man, and 

 then fixes its hollow eves upon the foreclosure of the farm mortgage and 

 follows the halt and broken couple to the poor-house. It runs up great 

 columns of figures which silently emphasize the decline, adding into one 

 sum all the economic and social ills of a generation. In the intervals 

 there comes the angel of hope, sweet-faced but sad, who prescribes a 

 remedy for each of the ills; yet we are not comforted because we are 

 not enlightened. It is all a nightmare, and nightmares are past finding 

 out. 



The trouble is that we are fixing our eyes upon the symptoms, and 

 we are giving treatment for the fever, but are not discovering the caus'3 

 of the septicaemia. We can rarely effect a permanent cure by confining 

 ouFi-elves to symptomatic treatment. We must find the cause of present 

 disaffection or we cannot hope to administer permanent relief. Few of 

 the facts which are commonly cited as determinants of the agricultural 

 status are really causes; nor do I believe that we shall arrive at the funda- 

 mental, difficulties by study of the statistics of production and popula- 

 tion or by examination of legislative history. If the difficulties are ever 

 solved, I fancy that they will be apprehended by some bold spirit who 

 arrives at his conclusions by inference which will need neither defense 

 or proof. 



I. — THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINE. 



It would seem that the first question to consider is whether there really 

 is an agricultural disease; that is, whether there is any grave economic 

 trouble or disorder which is peculiar to agriculture and which must be 

 remedied by means wholly different from those which are invoked for 

 the cure of other economic ills. Every man who has thought seriously 

 in this direction has arrived at an independent conclusion, in which we 

 find the resultant of the forces of the man's education and environment. 

 For myself, after a prolonged study of the question, I am convinced that 

 there is no agricultural disease. This is not saying that there are not 

 grave difficulties and discouragements in the agricultural status, but 

 these difficulties are not such, in my opinion, as demand fundamental 

 legislative treatment. A^.^e can best understand the subject by makiijg a re- 

 view of some of the changes which are commonly associated with the 

 idea of an agricultural decline. 



An agricultural community stretched along the shores of Cayuga Lake, 

 and it prospered. The countinside sloped away to the rising sun, glad 



