AGRICULTUKAL COLLEGE 471 



Great movements and readjustments similar to tliese are frequent in 

 nature. Ihey follow in the wake of man. There is universal and intense 

 struggle for existence. Any plant or animal left wholly to itself would 

 cover m a few years all that part of the earth in which it can live; and 

 1 hereupon there would arise a fiei'ce conflict with itself. But there are 

 thousands upon thousands of plants and animals, each intent upon one 

 purpose of perpetuating its kind, (lear off the forest, and how quickly the 

 pokewteds and thistles spring for the opening, and how intense the 

 cont.ict! New countries abound in such readjustments. The early New 

 England hiid its scourge of caterpillars, our own Northwest has its 

 lai!>sm thistle, Australia its rabbits, Jamaica its mongoose, the Pam]tas 

 their cardoons, and Egypt had its plagues; and every farm repeats the 

 story on a smaller scale. After a time the readjustment comes, equil- 

 ibrium is again established, the invasion of the Canada thistles is 

 check( d, and the Junegrass covers the battle ground with a mantle of 

 victory. 



There was an economic equilibrium. One hand served the other. A 

 cloud appeared upon the eastern horizon, and as its outlines became dis- 

 tinct, it was seen to be twain, and each half matured into a hurricane 

 — one part of the great industrial awakening following the era of inven- 

 tion, the other change of place or migration resulting in the opening 

 of the vast West and of the uttermost parts of the earth. The new enter- 

 prises — manufacture and its train — fitted themselves to the new condi- 

 tion because thi^y were new, but agriculture — oldest of arts, stereotyped 

 and haidened by the traditions of centuries — agriculture went under the 

 wave, and she is just now emerging, dripping with the tears of her sor- 

 rows, but with her face towards the rising sun! 



II — THE PUESENT STATUS. 



We come, now, to this new birth, to this time of hope in knowledge 

 and science; — and what of the future? We may not prophesy until we 

 take account of our present status. Are the conditions of agriculture 

 so bad as they have been pictured to be? No, not to my thinking. There 

 are unusual hardships in regions where there have been unusual dis- 

 turbances, but, as a general statement, the farmer is as well off as any 

 citizen who expends an equal amount of capital and effort; and if he is 

 not. the remedy is not complaint nor recrimination, but an earnest and 

 patient effort to undo the wrong. This cry of the hardships of agricul- 

 ture is not new. Its refrain wails throughout history. The husbandman 

 is at first the maker of society; as the social condition becomes complex- 

 he becomes a serf, then a peasant, and finally, in America, a landholder- 

 and an enfranchised citizen. Virgil sketched this evolution: 



"For ere .love's day, no liind the land compelled, 



Nor might he stablish n landmark, nor divide 

 His holding from his fellows; but all, as one, 



Wrought without question, and the earth satisfied 

 Richly their needs. Now those old days are done; 



Jove to the serpent his black poison gave. 

 Bade the wolf prey, and lifted the angry wave. 



And he smote from the trees their honey-dew. and hid 

 The fire in the rock, and the i-unning rivers of wine 



Shut in strait channels. And all these things he did. 



