232 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



implements and the crops would grow, and when the soil no 

 longer responded to that sort of treatment they had only to go a 

 little farther westward and take up new lands at a dollar and a 

 quarter an acre and repeat the process. Now we find ourselves 

 in possession of the very soil over which our fathers passed in 

 the progress of civilization westward. It is no longer a virgin 

 soil. It has already yielded to the plowshare and to the tread 

 of civilization. Every acre of it has doubled in value within 

 the last ten years. On a poorer soil we are face to face with the 

 proposition of making two blades of grass, two ears of corn or 

 two dollars grow where one used to grow before, or we can't 

 make the same rate of interest on the investment that we made 

 ten years ago because our capital has doubled. 



Our students of political science and political history tell 

 us of many reasons for the downfall of the Roman Empire, the 

 chief of which they claim was political corruption in the city of 

 Rome, but there is a reason farther back than that. If we look 

 over the pages of history we find that there came a time in the 

 Roman Empire when the people lost their love for the soil and 

 the open country and drifted into the towns and cities. The 

 fertility of their soil had become depleted and the quality of 

 their citizenship had declined. Wherever we find a nation with 

 a depleted soil we find the quality of its citizenship declining, 

 and sooner or later it becomes a weak nation. The people in 

 authority in the city of Rome surrounded themselves with all 

 sorts of luxuries. They even sent men out in the country to 

 gather slaves and bring them back to the city of Rome. The 

 people in authority there were surrounded by all sorts of luxuries, 

 the children born to the city of Rome were born to slaves. 



In telling you some of the facts and conditions that exist 

 today in Missouri I should like to take you from a county seat 

 out along a country road to an old-fashioned farm home. 'Twas 

 a good old home in its day, a two-story log house with walnut 

 weatherboarding without, finished with ash lumber within, two 

 big rooms below and two above with long halls between and a 

 great long ell. Here in this old home not many years ago in the 

 autumn time, when the leaves were red and yellow and brown 

 and gold, there was born a rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed baby boy, 

 and as he looked up into the eyes of his mother, his own reflecting 

 the beauty of heaven and earth, no wonder the mother ex- 

 claimed "Surely you are the sweetest baby in the world!" And 

 to that mother he was. The days, the weeks, the months, the 



