8u IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
ments themselves, nor politicial movements. The great mass of the 
thinking people get to thinking a thought, or a series of thoughts 
more or less disjointed; the more masterful mind of statesmanship 
perceives the thought that is uppermost in the mind of a great free 
people, and proceeds to organize and crystallize it into a form for 
action. And it seems to me that is what the appointment of this 
commission means, and that that great man has seen the trend of 
the times. 
While interest in public schools is of long standing and almost uni- 
versal, and while interest in agriculture is not of long standing and 
not quite so universal, interest in public school agriculture is more 
modern than either of these, and yet it is not wholly new. In almost 
any of our states we find evidences of this interest in public school 
agriculture. I am not going to stop to enumerate them, because I 
understand my time is limited. If I am right, however, in the theory 
that we are on the eve of a great movement for the improvement of the 
production of raw material in agriculture, then it behooves us to con- 
sider the conditions that will enable us to solve these problems the 
most rapidly. 
I believe we need agriculture in the public schools for three great 
reasons: for better agriculture, for better homes and citizenship, for 
better schools, and I will pay my attention to each of those very 
rapidly and discursively. 
We need it for better agriculture for these four reasons, looking 
simply toward the future for a moment: for preserving the fertility of 
the soil; for carrying on agriculture with higher priced labor even 
than we now have; for feeding a population tenfold as great as that 
of the past; and for so intensifying our agriculture that we shall get 
adequate financial returns upon land which shall double — possibly treble 
and quadruple — its present value in the state of Iowa. This makes it 
imperative, it seems to me, that the boys and the girls who are going 
to solve the agricultural problems of the next generation shall be 
differently prepared than our fathers and mothers were. 
Don't let anyone misinterpret my attitude toward the men of the 
past. I want to say that if the boys of the next generation solve their 
problems as well as you have done, they will do well. I don't mean 
to say that the boy of the next generation must be a better man than 
his father, and I don't expect him to solve his problems any better 
than his father has done; because it is wonderful to me what the men 
have done who came out into this new country and made it what it is 
in so short a time. But his problems, while no more difficult, are very 
different. His father's problems were of the pioneer nature; the son's 
problem is the intensive and the preserving cultivation of the soil; con- 
sequently he must have a different kind of preparation. That prepara- 
tion which made your father and mine fairly successful farmers will 
not do for their sons and grandsons. 
The question is, where is this preparation for these new duties 
to come from? Is there a fund of scientific agricultural knowlegde 
which, if applied, will help to solve these problems? I believe there is, 
and that the great agricultural colleges have been keeping quite good 
