Live Stock Breeders' Association. 119 



The large and ultimate duty of the farmer is to feed the 

 hungry, and clothe the naked of earth. The rapid and inevitable 

 increase in population necessitates a corresponding increase in the 

 products of the farm. In the past we have met this necessity by 

 broadening our fields, by reaching out into new territory; but with 

 the taking up of most of our tillable land, and with the end of 

 the distribution of public lands already in sight, the question of 

 increasing the yield on the land we now cultivate becomes at once 

 a vital necessity and whatever means we may adopt to secure this 

 larger yield, whether by better cultivation, or by better seed, it 

 must be confessed that no means will prove permanently effectual 

 that does not maintain the fertility of our soil. 



It is not right that one class of our citizens should bear the 

 whole burden of perpetuating our national prosperity. It is a duty 

 and a privilege that should be shared by all alike, and our people 

 will gladly pay the price of this permanent prosperity when once 

 they have been shown the necessity of it. 



We as a people have had experience in the wasting of our soil 

 fertility. We have tasted the bitter fruits of that old but empty 

 theory that our soil is inexhaustible. Those vacant, crumbling 

 homesteads of our older states have been stern but effectual teach- 

 ers and America is learning her lesson. We are seeing more and 

 more the wisdom of conserving our most valuable national asset; 

 and our moral conceptions have so awakened that we can now see 

 that our old system of thoughtless destruction is not only a hazard- 

 ous business, but a crime against our country. But the old system 

 is doomed. It has had its feast and its revelry, and it has seen 

 the handwriting on the wall! And oh, hasten the day when the 

 abandoned farms of New England shall lift no more their warning 

 voice, but shall stand the silent sepulchres of a policy dead forever 

 in America ! 



Our national industries have well been likened unto a tree; 

 manufacture and commerce represented by the branches and leaves, 

 agriculture by the roots. Now that part of the tree which attracts 

 the eye, is the part above ground. It receives the credit for all 

 that is good and loved in it. It affords the sweet shade and the de- 

 licious fruit. But we forget that the roots reach down into the 

 earth and patiently gather the raw material out of which the 

 beautiful fabric of branch, of leaf, and of fruit, is fashioned; and 

 any injury or benefit received by the root is shared by the rest of 

 the tree. And I have thought that if we as a people cared for this 

 our tree, as did of old that keeper of the vineyard who spared the 



