220 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



to Director Morgan of the Experiment Station: "Professor, there 

 is a problem we cannot solve, and we must call on you for help." So 

 I say there are a lot of problems which farmers cannot solve and must 

 call on the Stations to solve them. But the farmers have already solved 

 many important problems. My office, last July, was converted into the 

 office of Farm Management. It is a part of our work now to study the 

 farmer and what the farmer has accomplished. 



It is the chief function of the office of Farm Management to convey 

 to the farmers the results of scientific teaching, results obtained by the 

 Experiment Stations ; and whenever we are sure of a certain result, when 

 we are sure a certain thing is a good thing in any part of the country, we 

 go and try to persuade the farmer to make use of it on his own farm, 

 and we help him out as far as we can in applying it. That is, in very 

 brief outline, the work of the office of Farm Management. Down in 

 the cotton states there is no difficulty in teaching farmers how to do 

 better. We have established thirty-five farms down there — object lesson 

 farms. We are running those farms in conjunction with the experiment 

 .«;tations to show the farmers they can do something besides grow cotton. 

 Our work in demonstrating improved methods of farming has very 

 largely been a success in that section of the country where the poverty 

 is the most extreme, where they need our help the most, and are calling 

 loudly for help from any source they can get it. The average family 

 income from cotton is being cut down one-half, from $80 to $40, by the 

 boll weevil; and we are trying to help the farmers to improve their condi- 

 tion, to get out from under the tryanny of old King Cotton. I wish I 

 had time to tell you more about the work this office is doing. 



Twenty years ago ne:st June I graduated from this institution. I 

 was a very proud boy that day ; but soon after that I was called out of 

 the State, and this is the first time I have ever had the privilege of ad- 

 dressing an audience of Missouri farmers;' I appreciate it more than I 

 can tell you. I am one of you, was born and raised and educated in your 

 midst, and you can imagine the gratification with which I come here and 

 see this magnificent Department of Agriculture developing in this great 

 University. The University is already known better for its Department 

 of Agriculture, perhaps, than anything else, because it is the thing the 

 papers write most about. The farmers of the country are getting inter- 

 ested in agricultural colleges, and they are appropriating money to build 

 up one of the greatest institutions of the kind here in the State of Mis- 

 souri, whose object it is to study the needs of the farmers of the State. 



