40 ASSOCIATIONS FOE THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. (AMERICAN.) 



sity of Pennsylvania. His theme was " The 

 American Farmer, his Present Economic Con- 

 dition and Future Prospects." The condition 

 of the i'arming class is at present exciting keen 

 attention in nearly every civilized country. The 

 politics and economics of the United States, 

 England, France, Germany, Austria, and even 

 Russia, are busied to-day with the farmer as 

 they never were before. The farmer question, 

 therefore, is no longer a local question, no longer 

 confined to the United States, but is world-wide 

 in its importance, and must be considered to 

 some extent in its international aspects. The 

 remarkable phenomena occurring in connection 

 with the Farmers' Alliance movements show at 

 once how deeply the iron has entered into the 

 soul of the American farmer, and how thoroughly 

 he has become aware that for some reason or 

 other he is not keeping pace in his material, in- 

 tellectual, and social progress with other classes 

 in the community. It is not surprising that in 

 this awakening he should not at first perceive 

 the true source of his ills, and that he should 

 attribute many of the disadvantages under 

 which he labors to the machinations of other 

 social classes. It is natural that he should see 

 in the railroads, in the gold bugs of Wall Street, 

 in the tariff on imports, in the banks and bank- 

 ers, and in the monetary policy of the Govern- 

 ment, the bitter enemies of his prosperity. 

 Nothing will be gained for us, either from an 

 economic or political point of view, by belittling 

 or deriding the views of Western farmers on the 

 money question, on the tariff, on the railroad 

 policy, on taxation, and other similar topics. 

 The American farmer has a grievance which 

 must be carefully studied by students of eco- 

 nomics and statistics, to ascertain, if possible, 

 how far it is justified, and whether it can be 

 remedied, and, if so, by what means. 



The wealth of the United States is flowing 

 away from its farms into its factories and rail- 

 roads ; from the country into the city ; from the 

 rural into the urban districts. The policy of 

 our railroad companies has borne hard upon the 

 individual farmer and upon the farmer as a class. 

 It has altered all the conditions of agriculture in 

 many sections of the country, and in nearly all 

 of them in such a way as needlessly to burden 

 and embarrass the farmer. The Granger legisla- 

 tion of the Western States was a perfectly justi- 

 fiable attempt to check the wanton aggression of 

 many ailroad managers upon the fundamental 

 rights of the rural classes, and, though it was at 

 many points unsuccessful, it was the first dis- 

 tinct step in a policy of controlling railroad man- 

 agement in the interests of the public. Our 

 system of taxation as a whole rests most heavily 

 upon the farmer. 



Nor is there any doubt that the financial pol- 

 icy of the country, using that term in the broadest 

 se-nse, as including the whole system of monetary 

 transactions built up by the combination of gov- 

 ernmental action and private initiative, discrim- 

 inates very directly and keenly against the farmer 

 and the farming class. Nor can it be said that 

 the tariff policy of the country has"been managed, 

 at least directly, with an eye as much to the 

 farmer's interest as to that of other classes. 



It is no wonder, then, that the American 

 farmer is in a bad way, and likely^ to be in a 



worse one. Along what line does improvement 

 lie? In the first place, of course, in the direc- 

 tion of altering the influences above referred to. 

 Railway policy must be altered at many points 

 at some of them fundamentally. The system of 

 taxation must be readjusted and the farmer 

 relieved of unjust burdens. The tariff must be 

 improved ; the banking and general monetary 

 policy of the country changed in many respects. 



The forces which are crowding the American 

 farmer to the wall are world-wide, and not 

 iherely national forces. He is going to the wall 

 because he is trying to compete with farmers of 

 a low grade of intelligence and civilization in 

 the production of crops where intelligence and 

 civilization count for comparatively little. 



The American farmer must seek new crops 

 where intelligence and skill count for more than 

 mere fertility of soil or juxtaposition to market, 

 and where, having once established himself, he 

 may bid defiance to the ignorance and ineffi- 

 ciency of the foreign peasant. This calls for a 

 broad and liberal policy toward agriculture in 

 all its relations. 



If our farmers' alliances, grangers' associa- 

 tions, horny-handed sons of toil conventions, 

 etc., would, with all their getting, get under- 

 standing, would, after securing or better, while 

 securing needed reforms in the railway, tax, 

 tariff, and monetary policy of the country, 

 go to the very root of the matter, viz., remedy 

 the indolence, ignorance, conservatism of the 

 farming classes themselves in all that pertains 

 to agriculture, no American could have cause 

 to fear even the wildest propositions of the fiat- 

 money anti-corporation demagogue. 



The following-named papers were read : 



" The Necessity for State Supervision of Railway 

 Extension," by Benjamin W. Snow j " The Economic 

 Value of Cooking-Schools in the District of Colum- 

 bia," by Laura O. Talbott; "The Code of Inherit- 

 ance," by Richard T. Colburn ; " Numerical Relations 

 between Amount and Value of United States Potato 

 Crop and Amount of Importations," and " United 

 States Mercantile Marine and Duty Rates," by Henry 

 Farquhar ; " The Muck Soils of the Florida Penin- 

 sula," by Harvey W.Wiley ; " The Artesian Wells 

 and Underground Waters of Central Texas^" by 

 Robert T. Hill ; " Energy as a Factor in Rural Econ- 

 omy," by Manly Miles; " World's Columbian Expo- 

 sition," by Alexander D. Alexander ; " Free Coinage : 

 why not ? " by Edward Atkinson ; " The Coinage 

 Ratio in our Silver Policy," by Edward T. Peters ; 

 " The Eleventh Census and Statistics of Manufacture," 

 and "Permanent Census Bureau," by George A. 

 Priest ; " Tabulation Errors of Census," by Mrs. M. 

 C. Baker ; " The Locust or Grasshopper Outlook," by 

 Charles V. Riley ; " Immigration as an Economic 

 Sociologic Problem," and " The Economv and Thrift 

 of Machinery," by Charles S. Hill; "The Census- 

 counting Machine," by John S. Billings ; " On a 

 Measure of the Reliability of Census Enumeration," by 

 Alexander S. Christie ; "A National University : its 

 Character and Purposes," and " The Science and Art 

 of Government," by Lester F. Ward ; " The Southern 

 Old Fields," by W J McGee ; " Agriculture by Irri- 

 gation: Some Social Economic Possibilities," by 

 Richard J. Hinton ; " Water Management the Prob- 

 lem of the Future," by Bernhard E. Fernow ; and 

 " The Needs of the American Flax-fiber Industry," 

 by Charles R. Dodge. 



Popular Features of the Proceedings. 



On the evening of Aug. 19 a reception was given 

 to the association by the Board of Trade of 



