Missouri Country Life Conference. 



231 



J. Kelly Wright. 



COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENTS IN MISSOURI. 



(J. Kelly Wright, Farmers' Institute Lecturer, Missouri State Board of Agriculture.) 



I am supposed to talk to you on country life movements in 



Missouri. Since my time is allotted to 

 thirty minutes I shall spend one-third of 

 it mentioning some facts and conditions 

 that exist, one-third in giving the rea- 

 sons for these conditions, and devote 

 the remainder of the time to the remedy. 

 I would like first to call attention to the 

 country life movement in this and other 

 states. Society is today really in the 

 most critical condition in which it has 

 been since the government in the United 

 States began. We are to determine 

 within the next twenty-five or fifty years 

 at most whether or not farm peasantry 

 comparable to that in some European countries shall exist here. 

 I do not think it will ever exist in this country, but if it does 

 not, it will be because the people rise up in their might and 

 change some of the conditions that have been brought about 

 within the last hundred years and make better conditions, all of 

 which have to be brought about and determined mainly by the 

 country people themselves, or at least by the country people in 

 co-operation with the best men of the villages, towns and cities. 

 Agriculture is the very basis of our Nation's life. The life 

 of this State and the life of this Nation ultimately depends on 

 just about two things: the fertility of our soil and the quality 

 of our citizenship. As Mr. Jordan said, good soil and good 

 citizenship lie mighty close together. 



Now if you would just go with me from the New England 

 States I would take you down the Atlantic coast across through 

 the states of Indiana, Missouri and out into Kansas, north 

 through Nebraska, through the Dakotas and on up into Canada. 

 Looking backward, I would show you a train of depleted soils 

 over which our fathers passed in the progress of civilization 

 westward. It is not for us to criticise our fathers because I 

 think they farmed rightly. I think they met the conditions of 

 their times when land was rich and cheap and plentiful; when 

 they had only to tickle the soil a bit with their crude farming 



