APPENDIX 539 



"'If it should require just as much to the bushel, there are some prob- 

 able, and several certain, advantages in favor of thorough practice. 



"'It is probable it would develop those unknown causes which of late 

 years have cut down our crops below their former averages. 



"'The thought recurs that education, cultivated thought, can best be 

 combined with agriculture labor, or any labor, on the principle of thorough 

 work, and thorough work again renders sufficient the smallest quantity of 

 ground to each man, and this again conforms to what must occur in a world 

 less inclined to war, and more devoted to the arts of peace, than heretofore. 



'"Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, 

 and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a com- 

 fortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. 



'"No community whose every member possesses this art can ever be 

 the victim of oppression hi any of its forms. Such community will be alike 

 independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings.' 



"These words of Mr. Lincoln could not have appealed 

 very strongly to the farmers of Wisconsin or the neighboring 

 states when land and its products were about the cheapest 

 thing in which men dealt. 



"Why expend money or especial effort to increase pro- 

 duction when the most indifferent farming produced more 

 than could be used and the surplus in many cases would not 

 bring the bare cost of production? Why spend money in 

 building up and enriching the soil when for two thousand 

 miles, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, land as rich and 

 fertile as the best on earth could be had for the asking. 



"Fifty years later this admonition, under the changed 

 conditions, comes with the force and significance of proph- 

 ecy, because it applies now to a vital, burning question in 

 which lie the issues of national life or death. 



"When these words were spoken, and for thirty years 

 following, production exceeded consumption, and there was 

 a steady, continuous, heart-breaking decline in the values 

 of the thing produced. 



"Now, and for ten years past, consumption is overtaking 

 production with alarming rapidity, and values are rising by 

 leaps and bounds. 



"Then, increased consumption could be provided for by 

 increased acreage; now, this is impossible. Increased con- 

 sumption can only be met by increased production on sub- 

 stantially our present acreage. 



"Then, the outlook for agriculture was dark and almost 

 hopeless, the market was limited, prices low, and the ten- 

 dency was always down. Now, the market is unlimited at 

 liberal and steadily advancing prices." 



