508 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



a great deal about the business which men conduct, and the pro- 

 fessions which they pursue, and the wealth which they acquire, and 

 we know that the wealth which is accumulated under present condi- 

 tions by men who are engaged in the coal oil business and men who 

 operate coal mines, and men who conduct railroads, is often enorm- 

 ous. It is not so often that we hear of great fortunes accumulated 

 by the farmer, but the man for instance, who takes coal oil out 

 of the earth, presently, toward the close of his life, you hear of his 

 being possessed of a hundred millions, with an ambition to be the 

 richest man on earth, to be presently a billionaire. When you look 

 right down to the foundation of it, what does his fortune repre 

 sent? Ages ago the Lord put under the surface of the ground that 

 natural deposit of oil, doubtless intended to be for the benefit of 

 humanity in future ages, and by some process he has secured posses- 

 sion of it. He didn't put it there; he didn't make it; he found it, 

 as it were, or the conditions were such, the commercial conditions 

 which this immense deposit of wealth represented were such, that 

 it has fallen to him. You look at the coal and it is substantially the 

 same thing. Countless ages ago, huge forests grew over the earth, 

 and presently the wood was gathered together through the instru- 

 mentality of a deluge of water, and deposited in some place or other 

 with a superincumbent mass of earth that was heaped over it, and 

 was presently carbonized, and there was the coal. The men who 

 get out that coal, think of course, that they are great business men; 

 that they are advancing commerce. They talk to you about com- 

 mercial interests, but remember that every ton of that coal which 

 is taken out and sent abroad, is just that much native force gone. 

 So far from seeking to distribute and scatter it, so far from regard- 

 ing it as a public benefit, that it should be sent over to Manchuria 

 to enable the Japanese to shoot Russians, or the Russians to shoot 

 the Japanese, it represents just that much waste, just that much 

 dispersion, and the men who handle it have nothing to do with the 

 accumulation of that wealth. 



With the farmer it is a different proposition. Every ear of corn, 

 every blade of grass, every beet and turnip, every calf that grows 

 to a cow on his place, represents his own productive work, there- 

 fore, it is manifest that not only all those people live because of the 

 work which the farmer does, but his work represents not waste and 

 destruction, but an addition to the material welfare of humanitv 

 anid productiveness, and it is in this respect that the work of the 

 farmer differs from that of almost all the other men who have their 

 lives and being upon the face of the earth. 



Now J have talked to you rather longer that I expected. As I 

 said, it is a great pleasure to me to be here with you; I am a sort 

 of a dilettante farmer myself. I have two farms, and I undertake 

 to see them every two or three weeks. I go over them and fancy 

 they belong to me and see what is going on. To some extent I super 

 vise them and see what is being done. In that sense I may be said 

 to be a farmer, and I am very well satisfied that it is so. 



I found this by experience as well as by observation: W T hen a 

 young man, with all his aspirations and ambitions before him, starts 

 out on his career, he thinks it would be a great thing to go out into 

 the great crowd where things are moving amid the noise and cries 

 of trade and commerce, where things are going along, and to venture 



