28 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
through their Federal and State governments. Here, I remark 
first, that it is a fundamental consideration in the administration 
of the State, that its patrimony shall not be diminished. Individuals 
are temporary, but states are perpetual. States exist because 
people may permanently occupy and inhabit a given territory. It 
is manifest upon first thought that the perpetuity of the State is 
dependent upon the ability of the people occupying a given territory 
to maintain themselves. There are just two ways of doing this — 
first by living at the expense of people in other territories as a 
reward for success in battle; the other is so to use and develop the 
resources of the native country as to make a continuous and com- 
mercial prosperity inevitable. It is further manifest that, if any 
State permits its natural resources to decline, it thereby threatens 
its own dignity, prosperity, and eventually its existence. Experi- 
ments abundantly prove that uneducated men left to themselves 
will neither preserve nor develop the original resources of a country. 
An impoverished soil precedes an improverished people, and a reck- 
Isss use of natural resources precedes a decline of national vigor. 
There is a certain high type of patriotism therefore in preserving 
and rightly using the resources at the command of any people. 
Now agriculture is the great industry which provides for the main- 
tenance of the people. Food, shelter and protection are the most 
fundamental of human wants. With these agriculture has im- 
mediate relation. An aroused intelligence soon perceives two 
things: First, that a great population is necessary for the greatest 
national and individual development. Second, that unless the 
natural resources are preserved this increase of population is 
the prophecy of its own disaster. Agricultural education has 
already discovered that much of our country is less productive now 
than three generations ago. It has also discovered that much of 
this may be reclaimed by judicious treatment and brought to a high 
state of production. Even in a generation these experiment stations 
and colleges have demonstrated beyond question the open road to 
larger production, greater agricultural prosperity, and therefore a 
financially stronger government. On the theory, therefore, of self 
preservation, the State can clearly justify the expenditure of money 
for research that shall determine what use may most wisely be 
made of our patrimony. This body of knowledge is the condition 
preceding intelligent action. It must not be tradition or old wives’ 
fables, but scientific truth on which may be based intelligent in- 
dustry. If we assume that the day is not yet at hand when it 
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