88 Agriculture and Its Needs 



back to Mother Earth. Manufactures are 

 dependent. Importations are uncertain. 

 We may not always take toll of the com- 

 merce that comes through both our eastern 

 and our western doors and is carried over 

 our highways. Our great metropolitan 

 city may not always be the clearing house 

 of the nation's business, and even though 

 it is, the profits will continue to go into rel- 

 atively few hands. Mother Earth will 

 never forsake and she will never fool us. 

 Neither will she permit us to trifle with her. 

 One who can not afford to lose, can not 

 afford to speculate in uncertain and de- 

 moralizing crops any more than in uncer- 

 tain and demoralizing securities. Nor 

 can he afford to go on in the way which did 

 well enough when we were wholly an agri- 

 cultural people, when children were sea- 

 soned through doing their share of the work, 

 when books were few, and when the simple 



