TENTH ANXTAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 1(57 



things, too common, it seouis, for so many. That is the reason why many 

 people do not understand how some individuals seem animated libraries, 

 veritable walking encyclopedias of the common knowledge so useful in 

 everyday life on the farm. The education gained on the small farm 

 broadens citizenship. Go where you will in the world, with the small 

 independent farmers the best government exists, for they are the people 

 who are lovers of their homes. 



"The farmers in those sections of the country where there are plenty of 

 them to control the ballot are well versed in many of the intricate points 

 of politics. Each has learned to keep a reserve of cash and their accumu- 

 lations have become a most important factor in the finance of the nation, 

 for their deposits are vastly more reliable than those of the capitalists in 

 the commercial centers. 



"The money necessary to carry on the business of the nation is not re- 

 ceived from the deposits of the money kings, but from the millions of 

 small, thrifty depositors. We have all observed that many boys, grown 

 up on small farms, have developed themselves in innumerable ways. Prom 

 the days of their earliest childhood they are compelled to "do things," 

 and in a majority of cases, independently and without help. Their train- 

 ing is thorough, and from this source alone the greater number of men 

 to fill the responsible positions of life are drawn. 



"Blessed be agriculture if a man have not too much of it." Eighty 

 acres is too much, 160 a misfortune and 320 a calamity." 



The quotation I have just cited, and the large number of similar 

 successes on small farms which are being brought before the attention 

 of the agricultural world every day in the year, goes to show that the 

 star of intensive farming is just in its ascendency. The great possibili- 

 ties of the small acreage given the benefit of every scientific agricultural 

 invention, rather than the larger acreage, which cannot possibly receive 

 the same care and attention, are beginning to demand consideration. If 

 such a development as that narrated by Mr. Martin is possible on a 

 brush and stone covered 20-acre plot in Nebraska, what could not be done 

 here in your own state, where, it has been said, every county, without ex- 

 ception, is blessed with soil so rich that even though the population of 

 the state increased several millions, all could be supported by intensive 

 farming alone? 



Intensive farming, to my mind, is one of the solutions for the problem 

 of keeping the college trained man on the farm. After passing through a 

 three, or perhaps four year's course at the agricultural school he has 

 learned farming from a point where the brain is called upon for action 

 just as much as is the physical man. He has learned to bring about re- 

 sults, not alone through strenuous manual labor, but through the applica- 

 tion of the principles of science adapted to the tilling of the soil. He 

 has learned to inquire into the why's and the wherefore's of his profession, 

 to analyze the life and habits of both his animal and plant products and 

 to seek out causes rather than be content with mere effects. Intensified 

 farming, calling forth as it does every activity of the brain, cannot but 

 appeal to the man who has trained his brain along that line, and as 



