revolution in ideas and methods that is involved. 
It seems to me that this is the paramount duty and 
mission of an organization such as this. It could 
well afford to throw aside most other issues pre- 
sented for its consideration, refuse to spend time 
upon alien or abstract questions and concentrate 
its energies and resources upon a campaign for 
better farming in the United States. For, indeed, 
this reform makes way slowly. It required over 
half a century in Great Britain to bring it about, 
although aided by the influence of the great land- 
ed proprietors. It is no new doctrine in this coun- 
try. I have been urging the essentials of better 
farming upon our whole people at every oppor- 
tunity for more than twenty-five years. In all 
the agricultural colleges of the country it is taught. 
Farmers’ Institutes have done much to make it 
known. And still bad methods, soil exhaustion, 
skimming the cream of the land by single crop- 
ping, are the rule instead of the exception. The 
once matchless fields of the Northwest are dete- 
riorating. The average wheat yield has fallen on 
some of our best land from twenty-five bushels 
or more to about twelve. Something must be done 
to reverse the process. By constant iteration of 
well-established truths, by the appeal to self in- 
terest, since the farmer can double his own gains 
for the same labor, by endless agitation and pa- 
tient instruction the work may be accomplished. 
That it must be done is the most important fact 
19 
