confronting us as a nation today. The armed 
fleets of an enemy approaching our harbors would 
be no more alarming than the relentless advance 
of a day when we shall have neither food nor the 
means to purchase it for our own population. The 
farmers of the nation must save it in the future, 
as they have built its greatness in the past. 
My suggestion, then, would be that each one 
of you individually and this association as a whole 
subordinate every activity to the educative idea; 
that you expend energy and resources without 
stint upon spreading everywhere a knowledge of 
the necessity, the feasibility and the financial profit 
of improved farming methods. Work with your 
senators and representatives, and with your state 
legislatures, if necessary, for the establishment 
of model farms in every congressional district, 
and if possible in every agricultural county in 
your respective states. Nothing would be so ef- 
fective as this practical object lesson. Every 
slack farmer would see the contrast between its 
fields and his own. Every man with a germ of 
intelligence would get more ideas and facts and 
insight into methods and the reason for them in 
a year by living as a neighbor to a well run model 
farm, conducted by an expert in agriculture, than 
he would in a lifetime from reading books or 
- listening to stump speeches. Above everything 
else, send your boys and girls, and insist that the 
farmers whom you know and can influence shall 
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