SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 411 



some concerted action, they they gone out and slaughtered and buried a 

 certain rercentage of their live stock, so it would not reach the mar- 

 ket, or burned a certain percentage of the grain. No one will think 

 that I am advocating that; I am stating the fact that we have had such 

 years, and within the memory of all of us. And, bringing it right 

 down to date, there is a very large percentage of farms, even in this 

 splendid state, that are not paying good returns to their owners, if 

 you charge against those farms interest on their present market value. 

 One of the reasons why there appears to be so much prosperity in our 

 agricultural sections is that the interest on the present value is being 

 enjoyed as a labor inccme. But let me tell you that when the next gen- 

 eration comes along onto some of those farms, and the market value has 

 to be taken into consideration, the situation will he remarkably differ- 

 ent than it is now. 



Now, these things are changing. It is but a few years since James 

 J. Hill, then the president of the Great Northern Railroad, said that 

 within twenty years this nation would go to bed hungry unless some 

 certain developments in the field of agriculture should take place. Agri- 

 cultural production in recent years has been decreasing. Within the 

 last two or three days there has been sent out from Washington a news 

 item to the effect that in the last sixteen years the population of our 

 country has increased 33 per cent, and the per capita production of 75 

 per cent of the articles of the American diet has actually been de- 

 creasing. During this period, the total number of pounds of meat, beef, 

 pork and mutton, per capita has decreased from 248 to 220 pounds per 

 annum. In 1900, seventeen years ago, we were sending away to Euro- 

 pean markets an average of about 500,000 live cattle per year. Two or 

 three years ago, before the war — we can get no figures for comparison 

 since the war began — those shipments had decreased to 6,000. 



Now, it is easy to make an audience tired of figures, and I shall avoid 

 doing that. I listened to a most interesting lecture by a great astronomer 

 a little time ago, and he was giving us a quantity of figures, and he said 

 he would illustrate. He told us how far it was to the sun. He said he 

 could tell us, perhaps, better in another way. He said if a person 

 would back up to a hot stove and accidentally touch his finger to that 

 stove, he would pull the finger away instantly; but before that finger 

 was taken away from the stove, two things took place — a me<5sage of 

 pain was flashed with electric swiftness, or more swiftly even than that, 

 from the point of the finger to the center of sensation; and an order to 

 the muscles to pull away was flashed back. It all happened in the merest 

 fraction of a second, so that it seemed to be instantaneous. Now, in 

 speaking about the sun, if one could stretch out his finger so as to touch 

 the sun — and we assume he would not be burned until the finger came 

 in contact with the sun — then, with the same electric swiftness, before 

 the sensation of pain was felt, it would take that person ninety years to 

 know that his finger was being burned, and it would take ninety years 

 more to get the orders back to pull it away. And thus the distance 

 of the sun was illustrated. 



