30 IB K IRRIGATION AGE 



Beautiful, did we say? Yes, because Webster says "beautiful implies 

 all the higher qualities which delight the taste and imagination." 



Look at the remarkable stride science has made in developing the 

 wonders of almost all other branches of nature's great work. Elec- 

 tricity, for instance, under the generalship of Edison, Bell and others. 

 It has got to where we are ready to believe almost any statement rela- 

 tive to its achievements. The first attempt to conduct power by elec- 

 tricity through the medium of a wire was a crude affair, though it was 

 accomplished; but look at it today! When harnessed to the falls of 

 Niagara, a marvel of wonder. 



Look at surgery today. Has science done anything for it in recent 

 years? Let one of our expert surgeons of thirty years ago be passed 

 at once to the present time, and he would stand in profound awe of the 

 marvelous works of scientific surgery of today. 



Look inside the large factories today and note the changes and 

 improvements. Take, for instance, that great labor-saving machine, 

 the harvester and binder, which costs a very small per cent, of whaq. 

 it cost twenty years ago. Take one piece, the cutter bar. We are 

 told that one man turns out as much work in one day by the use of 

 scientifically improved machinery as sixty men could do when first 

 they began the work. Now let us glance at agricultural science, more 

 especially the fundamental principles that underlie the whole work 

 that of soil tillage, for upon the quantity and quality of the product of 

 the soil depends our success. While the general success of our entire 

 country depends upon the ultimate success of agriculture, yet, until 

 within a very few years this great science has been sorely and sadly 

 neglected. We, as a nation, boast of being progressive; yet in the 

 science of agriculture, especially that of soil tillage, we are far behind 

 the mother countries. Don't think for a moment, kind reader, that 

 there are no developments along this line. Prof. F. H. King, of Wis- 

 consin, Prof. Milton Whitney, of New Jersey, Prof. H. P. Hilton, of 

 Kansas, and a few others, have made some wonderful develop- 

 ments in the recent years, and today it has first place at most of 

 our agricultural colleges. Farmers all over the west are now thor- 

 oughly awake to its importance. Individual farmers are experiment- 

 ing. Railroads, mortgage loan companies, bankers, in fact all local 

 and general interests throughout the entire west are taking up the 

 subjectf and some phenomenal results will materialize this year. Gen- 

 eral farming on scientific principles is rapidly coming 1o the front. 

 Get into the procession, reader. The real merits and values of the 

 west as a general farming country are just becoming known. Many 

 people seem to think the west of today has had an unwarranted boom, 

 and must now go back to stock and the ranchman. It was only a flurry 

 in proportion to a blizzard or a gentle zephyr in proportion to a cyclone 



