148 Missouri Agricidtiiral Report. 



boys. When China wanted to check opium smoking, she did not 

 commence by subsidizing the production of the poppy. How silly 

 in our people to enact stringent laws to curb the use of tobacco and 

 then to turn right around and appropriate money to encourage its 

 growth. The growth of this plant is very hard on the soil. More 

 public money is now needed to reclaim the fields thus reduced in 

 power to produce. The acres planted to tobacco in the United 

 States in 1912 would have produced about 100,000,000 bushels of 

 corn if they had had the chance. The corn would have left us 

 richer in power to produce, while the "weed" left us poorer in 

 human labor wasted and boys made less fit. If the growers of 

 tobacco wish to form an association and tax themselves for the 

 study of the crops, all well and good, but it certainly is time the 

 people refused longer to furnish money for the personal enrichment 

 of those in the business, or for the weakening of its own sons. 



The study of the brewing qualities of barley, and the ills 

 of the wine-grape are two other avenues of misappropriation under 

 the guise of aiding agriculture. 



The wisdom of state aid in the production of the useful is well 

 demonstrated by the prosperous, loyal condition of the Danish 

 people and the wicked folly of state aid in the growth of the use- 

 less or worse is abundantly exemplified by the poverty, squalor and 

 anarchistic tendencies in certain portions of France and Italy to- 

 day. 



When the fruit of any labor has genuine human value, then 

 the people's money may properly be spent in its study, but when 

 not, appropriation is misappropriation. 



True agriculture is being studied, not for the farmer, but 

 through him for the people as a whole, but false agriculture is being 

 studied at the expense of the people for the benefit of a few and the 

 injury of many. 



