No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 233 



the other. Oh, how important it is in all this work that we have 

 community interests somewhere, the social center somewhere, handled 

 and governed and controlled by the wisest and most discreet men 

 and women of all that community, who shall lead along and lead up 

 the youth of that community to a desire for the highest order of 

 social life in that community. Do you think of all these things in 

 that way? 



Then again that other part, and I ought to call it the part per- 

 formed by the country church. It has been my privilege for the 

 past 16 years to travel up and down and all over Pennsylvania — in- 

 deed I can see its beauty spots here and there all over the State — and 

 consider these things; and Sabbath Day, as my custom is, I go into 

 the country church where I am stopping and have observed some 

 things; I have observed that the attendance at that little country 

 church has been for years on the decline and is to-day less than it 

 was a decade or two ago. What is the reason for all this? Are 

 we not a pious people? Do we not love spiritual things? I cannot 

 believe that we do not. But what is the reason for the decline in 

 the attendance in tliat country church? I will give you a thought 

 upon that: It is that occasionally, and I do not want to censure 

 the ministry, far from that, my own mother taught me better than 

 that, but one of the reasons, in my judgment, for the decline in 

 the country church is, that a certain proportion of the ministry in 

 these country churches have never studied the interests and principles 

 of agriculture. Why sometimes I have heard these ministers under- 

 take to pray as men of prayer and their prayer breathed not the spirit 

 of the husbandman but rather an excuse for it, and if the day comes, 

 my friends, when the country church will occupy the place the Lord 

 intended it should occupy in agriculture, it will be when the ministry 

 thereof have made a study of the great principles of agriculture, 

 and they can live and act in a sphere of sympathy with the great 

 work in which you and I are engaged, and that church will be- 

 come not only a religious but a social center, together with the 

 schools of the country, gathering in the young and the old in one 

 grand social and religious action. Then, together with the knowl- 

 edge attained through the study of the great principles of agriculture 

 by the great organization of Farmers' Institute workers and other 

 agencies, then may we expect, my fellow farmers, to have agriculture 

 stand up as a beacon light to every other industry and occupation 

 as the one occupation blessed of God and sanctioned and upheld 

 by all other industries, and we ourselves having the highest concep- 

 tion of the noblest work ever entrusted to mankind. 



But I want to turn again to this beautiful, splendid Crawford 

 county. You have some things here in great abundance. You have 

 a soil easy of cultivation, ready of response to j^our touch; but you 

 need some things that you do not have, in my conception of the 

 matter. If the farms of Crawford county were underdrained as 

 they should be, every acre of all these farms in the county would 

 double its production. Do you believe that? They would double 

 their production. Hence, I am firm in stating, first, underdrainage; 

 then careful cultivation. But I guess you are going to get more 

 water over here pretty soon and I don't know what to say about it; 

 but I do say that if I had the privilege of the cultivation, after 

 it was underdrained, of Pymotuming Swamp for ten years, I was 



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