KNOWING HOW TO KNOW HOW 347 



how to do it with Dr. Muck's compound of punk, alias 

 cheap whisky. It would be easy to breed and raise 100- 

 bushel wheat, 200-bushel corn, 1000-bushel potatoes, 1000- 

 pound-butter-fat cows, 300-egg hens, and so on down the list, 

 if we only knew how. We are gaining ground yearly; the 

 doing is step by step a test of the knowing. 



Fake sources of truth like poisoned wells. Sometime we 

 may be organized as a people, so that only the truth can be 

 printed. Our pure food and drug laws are beginnings in this 

 direction, but the millennium is still a long way off, and so 

 far attempts at assumption of human infallibility have been 

 failures. All we can do is to appeal for information to our 

 best authorities. These pretend to no secrets for a price ; 

 they always present the evidence, the proofs, the experi- 

 ments, on which their conclusions are based ; and it ought to 

 be possible to add, they never say they know a thing when 

 they do not ; that is, they never lie. No one can long remain 

 an authority if often mistaken on this most important of all 

 points, and a real authority is never afraid to say, " I do not 

 know." Successful farmers in different lines, our county 

 agricultural expert, Ic/cal nurseryman and florist, local forester 

 or tree warden, local bird man or woman (unfortunately we 

 seldom have any local insect students), local health officers 

 and reputable physicians, state and national experiment- 

 station experts and health officers, and the extension faculties 

 of our state universities these are our best authorities. 

 They belong to us ; we pay some of them their salaries to 

 give us the best knowing how there is ; and they are gladder 

 to do it than we are to wake up enough to ask them' for 

 help. By the divine right of being alive the best knowing^ 

 how there is in the world belongs to any child of humanity 

 who is hungry for it and who knows enough to ask for it 

 and to learn it. Our country is organized, through its edu- 

 cational forces, public press, and public libraries, to meet this 



