No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 325 



made a most miserable failure and mistake at it. We have to handle 

 these laws most carefully and knowingly. When we think of what 

 Burbank does, we can see the difficulties surrounding the question. 

 There are hundreds of thousands of plants that he raises, and his 

 great eye goes over that great growth and simply selects out one 

 or two which he bases his work of development along certain lines, 

 and for the purpose of reaching certain results and to accomplish 

 such results, it needs anxious care and observation. As it is with 

 the plant, so it is with the animal; therefore, in order to make it a 

 profitable business, if we want to succeed, we must start with the 

 animal in such a way that we breed the animal right. 



We will start with a thoroughbred. If a man wants to improve 

 his herd of cattle, he can do it through the sires. Any person can 

 improve his herd of cattle to-day by bringing in a thoroughbred into 

 the common herd. It is a slower way to do it, but it is a successful 

 way. We can learn along these lines how to accomplish results. 

 Then another thing, we must learn that we must take just as good 

 care of the soil as we do of the animal. While many persons dis- 

 agree with Prof. Cooke about the fertility of the soil, I would an- 

 dorse that foundationally. You must have the three elements in 

 your soil. You can fatten plants just as well as you can fatten 

 animals. You can get more protein into your plants if you have it 

 in your soil, and get more phosphoric acid if you have it in your soil, 

 with hay and grain from your soil that is rich in these qualities. 

 You don't know whfm the rain is going to come; you must have it 

 there so that if these conditions are favorable, nature will take it 

 up, because there is an abundant supply. I am not talking about the 

 renter and the landlord, but about honorable farming. Where a 

 man is in touch with God's earth, he is responsible to his Heavenly 

 Father, as a steward of his possessions. Farming is taking this 

 earth where God has breathed into it this life and fertility, and if the 

 robber man steals it out and then accuses the Almighty for making 

 the earth so poor, there is no greed more to be pitied than that of a 

 man who so little regards his obligations to his race and so reck- 

 lessly esteems his relations to the creative work of his Heavenly 

 Father. 



When you see the rich fields in the prairies of the West ladened 

 with every kind of element to make the plant grow, see the earth in 

 its richness and its fruit, and realize what the hand of the Maker 

 has done, and then look at your own State and see what has been 

 done by the hand of man, you can see very well that it is man's own 

 disposition of taking something and giving nothing, which has 

 brought about the existing conditions, and which you know is the 

 worst kind of business to do, and the method is comparable only to 

 that of those animals that make their living by stealing. The ex- 



