118 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



going to buy back these fertilizers? If he does not buy them, how 

 is he going to keep up his soil fertility? If he does not keep up his 

 soil fertility, how is American agriculture ever going to be put 

 upon a permanent basis ? And thus the paramount problem of our 

 country, the problem upon which rests the future welfare of every 

 citizen in all this land, the problem of permanently maintaining 

 ovr soil fertility, becomes and is, under present conditions, practi- 

 cally an impossibility. 



If there is one thought in all that I have said, or in what I may 

 yet say, that I would have you remember, it is this : If agriculture 

 is ever made permanent, it must first be made profitable; if we 

 are ever to adopt systems of soil improvement, it must be done 

 Vy-hile we are prosperous. 



Now it may be argued that profitable agriculture would not 

 insure permanent agriculture, that if the farmer received more for 

 his products, he would not spend the increase in maintaining soil 

 fertility. 



Doubtless this is true to a certain extent, but we must remem- 

 ber that whether or not he would keep up his fertility if he could, 

 in not an answer to the present question of keeping it up when he 

 cannot. The situation is this: If agriculture were truly profit- 

 able he could — as it is he cannot; and common-sense insists that 

 the first means of securing permanency in agriculture is to make 

 this permanency possible, and until we do make it possible, we are 

 of necessity wasting both time and talent in giving the farmer ad- 

 vice along this line. As good as our advice may be, it is a prime 

 essential that we first put the farmer in a position to follow the 

 advice. 



Among the many good results that would follow the adoption 

 of a system of profitable agriculture, would be the rapid increase 

 in the number of farmers. The American people are not slow to 

 recognize a good thing, and if they saw that farming was really a 

 good and profitable business, a large number of wage-workers in 

 the cities would come out into the country, buy a few acres and don 

 the "hickory hay." In a few years we should see inaugurated the 

 intensive system of farming — that system which is universally 

 recognized as most nearly ideal — that system which not only yields 

 best returns, but which does most to maintain soil fertility. And 

 thus we should approach that ideal national state of society with a 

 more uniform distribution of population, and with the greatest pos- 

 sible number of independent producers of wealth, each working to 

 the best possible advantage. 



