328 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



and occasionally a preacher was developed, but not many of them 

 became farmers. The reason for this was that the trained men, 

 graduates of the agricultural colleges, could do better financially 

 elsewhere than they could on tlie faim. Naturally, then, they drifted 

 into other lines of work. Those who did return to the farm, however, 

 showed the value of the training they had received, better methods of 

 agriculture were put into practice; and their farming methods be- 

 came models for the community. Almost until the present time the 

 agricultural colleges have continued giving a thoroughly scientific 

 education, and while this work must be continued yet there is another 

 growing demand at the present time, and this demand is for the 

 popv.larizing of agriculture education. I would not in any way 

 underestimate the importance of the work which has been done by 

 our agricultural colleges because their graduates have become leaders 

 in every walk of life, and it was owing to the great demand for men 

 in agricultural experiment station work and in scientific investiga- 

 tion of every kind that these graduates did not go back to the farm, 

 but their work has been of direct value in promoting the interests 

 of farm life through their application of scientific principles to the 

 problems of the farm. There was no popular demand for the agri- 

 cultural colleges to in an}^ way change their courses of instruction 

 or to render their work more popular. In fact the masses of people 

 cared very little what the agricultural colleges were doing anyway, 

 but when the price of food products began to soar beyond reach of 

 the average consumer, and the wages received by the workmen at the 

 end of the week were barely suflicient to pay the bills for food pro- 

 ducts which had accumulated during that week — then came the de- 

 mand for a more general dissemination of agricultural information 

 for the teaching of agriculture in the public schools. Then our 

 great railroad corporations became interested in better farming 

 trains, in model farms, in all that would in any way develop farm 

 life without interfering with the price they received for the trans- 

 portation of farm products. The settlement of all our arable lands, 

 leaving no further room for expansion westward has brought about a 

 demand for more intensive tillage of the lands which are now under 

 cultivation. Higher production per acre must come at once if relief 

 is to be found for the high cost of farm products. The partial de- 

 population of many of our rural communities has been brought about 

 not because of unfertile soil but simply because better opportunities 

 have been offered elsewhere, and the farming population, like people 

 in every walk of life, have accepted the opportunity offered them 

 even though it necessitated leaving the farm. 



The most constant and ever present demand of the human race is 

 for food. So long as the supply is plentiful no one pays 

 any special attention to the source from which it comes or 

 the conditions under which it is produced so long as the 

 product itself is in fair condition. The trouble with agri- 

 cultural science and its relation to the farmer has been 

 that there has practically been no relationship between the two. 

 The colleges and experiment stations have gone forward with their 

 work. A comparatively few well trained men have been developed 

 and these men have gone into various lines of work, and the indi- 

 vidual farmer working back over the hills has for the most part been 

 left to work out his problems as best he might. The other day in 



