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United States for growing crops and making homes M-here people can live and raise 

 families and live in cdinfort and hajipiness. All those lands are exceedingly ri(;h, 

 and our Department has done a good deal toward indicatmg what can be done with 

 them. One feature of our work is to grow crops where you can not put water. It is a 

 simple thing to grow cmps in that rich soil if you can get water, but it is an entirely 

 different thing to grow crops above the ditch where you can not get water; and many, 

 manv millions of acres in the United States are in that condition. Our explorers 

 a few vears ago searched the Old XN'orld for crops that would grow in a light rainfall, 

 say lO'inches.' They went to the drv lands of Russia and the dry lands of Algeria, 

 and thev found crops that had been grown in light rainfall there for many years, 

 for so nianv years that historv could not tell us anything aljout it. They brought 

 them out liere to our drv lands. I can not go into the details of the experiments, 

 but this year we will have prol^ablv twenty milHon l)ushels of wheat grown above 

 theditch", where water can not begottoit, which will be used for makingbread. Weare 

 usin" it every day in the city of Washington, and yon are eating it now, but you do not 

 happen to kiiow it It is as good as the bread we get from the rainy country wheat, and 

 it is richer in protein and the muscle-forming ingredients. Wherever we find that the 

 American farmer is needing help, we go there and see what can be done for him. 

 There is nothing really the matter with any acre of land I ever saw, Ijut there is a 

 very o-reat deal the matter with us. We do not know enough. Wherever you see 

 an acre of land growing anything, that is vour hint, and it is our business to find out 

 what will grow that is beneficial to the owner of that land. These are the lines along 

 which we are working. And now our institute worker goes to the agricultural experi- 

 ment station and to the agricultural college, and the Department of Agriculture 

 gets the results of this research and takes it out to the farmer, to the practical fanner, 

 to the man who is making his living by farming, and helps him to better methods 

 and more profitable ways of managing his crops. That is your field. It is your busi- 

 ness to know everything that is being done by the man who experiments and observes 

 and makes research. It is your business to become possessed of all of the results of 

 work along every line of agriculture, and then to go out in the field and get farmers 

 together and put practicalitv in their hands and in their minds new ways and facts, 

 so'^that you strengthen them"; and consequently you become missionaries for that pur- 

 pose; you become the most powerful medium we know of. The press is doing much 

 to help along with the dissemination of discovered truths in agriculture, it is doing 

 a great deal in newspapers and magazines and books, and we have come to the time 

 with our college men and our station men when agricultural men are putting on the 

 market text-books which twentv vears ago nobody could have had. And so, as I 

 remarked a while ago, what is uppermost in the minds of educators along agricul- 

 tural lines is the getting of the voung fellow from the farm in the common school and 

 secondary schoob headed toward tlie farm, instead of away from it. ^ There are no 

 well organized opposers nowadavs of an agricultural education. What opposition 

 mav have existed has been given' up. The farmers are organizing, and I am watch- 

 ing' with intense interest the organization of farmers for the purpose of protecting 

 themselves against those who have heretofore preyed upon them. There is no 

 declaration of independence that is more valuable than just that. A community of 

 farmers grow a great crop. The world needs that crop; the world must have it. In 

 old times the law of supplv and demand regulated the price. In modern times com- 

 binations of people who neither grow nor spin nor consume the crops are organized 

 for the purpose of makint; all the profit possible from them. The farmers have 

 bethought themselves that thev are interested in a peculiar degree in the growing 

 of those crops, and I have no doubt at all l)ut that the price of crops will be arranged 

 amicably in the future so that the men that produce them will have their remun- 

 eration.' I do not want to take a demagogical position with regard to anything, l)ut 

 a lively illustration comes to my recollection just now. Some years ago the price of 

 beef went up verv rapidly. It was not doing so much good to the peojjle who grew 

 the beef, but the people" who consumed the beef felt it very keenly. A newspaper 

 man asked me if the i)ackers were altogether to l)lame. I said, "Probal)ly not; I 

 think the middleman mav have something to do with it; the retailer may have 

 something to do with it, possiblv." A man here in Washington, a retailer of beef, 

 took me in hand and gave me a verv thorough talking to, and exposed my ignorance, 

 and told the world that all the profit that he had was 40 per cent on the beef he sold. 

 Now, I do not see anv particular necessity for anybody having such an enormous 

 profit between the purchaser and the consumer. If the old law of supply an(l 

 demand had been let alone— it was a comfortal)le old law, and writers on political 

 economy, like Adam Smith, built magnificent j^tructures on the top of it; but it is all 

 gone. "[i>aughter.] The law of supjilv and demand does not exist anymore in 

 regard to nuiiiy things. It is a ijuestioii of giving the farmer just enough encourage- 

 ment to go on "and grow crops, and those who neitlier grow the crops nor consume 



