76 Missouri AgriciUlKral Reporl. 



wisdom, greater insight and skill in the execution of the tasks about the 

 farm than in any other industry. The permanency of the raw material, 

 so to speak — the natural resources with which you deal, rests in your 

 hands. It rests not alone in your hands, but in the hands of everyone 

 who is engaged in the tilling of the laud, and if the Agricultural College 

 can do anything to make your profession permanently successful, as 

 it must be a permanent business, it stands ready to serve you; so does 

 every other department of the University. 



Something needs to be done in order to make farming permanent. 

 It has never yet been made permanent in the true sense, and if we- are 

 not to go the way of other nations it rests with us in America to do 

 something to make fanning a permanent occupation by the skill and 

 knowledge we put into it. 



I think, too, that it needs to be made a more comfortable and pleas- 

 ant occupation. When I return to my old home in the country and find 

 all the men of my age have left the community and gone to the cities 

 where many of them are barely eking out an existence, having been at- 

 tracted there by the modern conveniences — street cars, automobiles, lights, 

 etc., I am reminded that something must have been wrong in the comforts 

 and pleasures that came to them in their country life, and they were 

 attracted by those things in the city life that, so far as their essential ele- 

 ments are concerned, can be reproduced in the country. "We are making 

 progress, but have a long way yet to go in order to make the average 

 life on the farm as comfortable as it might be, and in this connection I 

 want to say it seems that we have not tried to make the farm home equal 

 in facilities to the farm itself — that is to say, we have spent more on our 

 reapers and plows and fai*m implements that Ave use in tilling the farm 

 more successfully than we have upon the facilities that would make a 

 house beautiful or comfortable, and I am glad to know that among those 

 I can welcome this morning are the wives of INIissouri farmers who come 

 here in order that during Farmers' Week we may consider problems 

 affecting the life of the kitchen or of the dining or the drawing room, as 

 well as those of the stable and the field. 



Then, too, it seems to me if we are to make our agricultural life a 

 permanent, profitable and happy life, we need to have better educated 

 farmers. Now, I know there is only one end at which we can begin if 

 we are to have a thoroughly educated people living in the country — we 

 must begin with the child rather than with the adult ; and I look forward 

 to a time in this State when we shall have a good school devoted to the 

 needs of young men and women who are to spend their lives on the farm, 

 and in such close proximity to the farm homes that everybody in the 



