10 Agriculture and Its Needs 



school in co-operation with a simple and yet 

 noble civilization sufficed to meet the es- 

 sential needs of a virile people, New York 

 was the first agricultural state of the Union. 

 All that is much changed. You will not 

 ask me to weary you with the details, avail- 

 able to all, which would prove an obvious 

 fact. Taking our wheat, corn, oats, barley, 

 rye, and buckwheat together, we have less 

 ?"n acreage and are producing less in quan- 

 tity than forty years ago. The total value 

 and the average value of lands, buildings, 

 implements, machinery and livestock are 

 less than thirty years ago. We have come 

 to be the first manufacturing state of the 

 Union. Our agriculture has not advanced 

 with our manufactures. In the cereals 

 other states, for sufficient reasons, have 

 forged ahead of us, and it seems to me that 

 we have not recouped where we might. 



I have much in common with the prac- 

 tical farmer; I join him in his amusement 



