108 Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



If this patriotic gospel is to make headway, it must be by just such 

 organized missionary work as is to-day begun. It can not go on and 

 conquer if imposed from without. It must come to represent the fixed 

 idea of the people's mind, their determination and their hope. It can 

 not be incorporated in our practical life by the dictum of any individual 

 or any officer of nation or state in his official capacity. It needs the 

 co-operation of all the influences, the help of every voice, the commenda- 

 tion of nation and state that has been the strength and inspiration of 

 every worthy work on American soil for one hundred and twenty years. 

 We return, for our gathering in council and for our plan of action for 

 the future, to the model given us by the fathers. State and Nation are 

 represented here, without jealousy or any ambition of superiority on 

 either side, to apply to the consideration of our future such co-operation 

 as that out of which this nation .was bcrn, and by which it has won to 

 worthly manhood. Reviving the spirit of the days that created our Con- 

 stitution, the days that carried us through civil conflict, the spirit by 

 which all our enduring work in the world has been wrought, taking 

 thought as Washington and Lincoln took thought, only for the highest 

 good of all the people, we may, as a result of the deliberations held and 

 the conclusions reached- here to-day, give new meaning to our future ; 

 new lustre to the ideal of a republic of living federated states ; shape 

 anew the fortunes of this country, and enlarge the borders of hope for 

 all mankind. 



THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Perhaps no one has had a better opportunity to know about the soil of 

 this nation than James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture. He made 

 the following remarks: 



' ' The paper read by Mr. Hill this morning made a very, deep impres- 

 sion upon me. The greatest asset we have in the United States is our 

 soil ; we are destroying that as rapidly as we can, and the oldest settled 

 part of the United States has made the most progress in the destruction 

 of our soil. Down on the Gulf coast the land has been peopled longer 

 than the upper part of the Mississippi Valley. The heavy rainfalls, 

 and the perpetual cultivation and growing of crops have helped erosion, 

 and the soil has been destroyed in that way. It is going off very, very 

 rapidly. The cure is a system of agriculture that will keep the soil 

 filled with plant food, organic matter, humus. That is the cure; that 

 is the way to keep up the soil. Somebody once asked an English 

 gardener how he got such a fine lawn. He had a beautiful grass lawn 

 which attracted attention. He said, 'We weeded, and we weeded; we 

 manured and we manured, for eight hundred years'; and that is the 

 way they got it." 



