No. 4.] THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION. 67 



for the impoverished condition of his farm ? God gave him 

 this land, endowed with every element of fertility. The 

 command of the Deity, duty to the State, the meaning of 

 good citizenship, the welfare of succeeding generations, 

 and, lastly, the financial profit of his own business, have all 

 enjoined upon him to keep up the productive power of the 

 soil. The skeleton of waste grins at him in derision, and 

 mocks at him when his fear cometh. Oh, what a sting there 

 is in the reproach of a worn-out farm ; still more a worn-out 

 State. The never-slumbering justice of Nature's God metes 

 out punishment for such wickedness of the fathers upon the 

 children, even unto the third and fourth generation, com- 

 pelling tiiem to expatriate themselves, and seek lands not 

 their home. 



We have had schools in abundance ; school-houses dot this 

 as they do no other land on earth. Our native American 

 farmers claim to be intelligent. Why have they not been 

 intelligent enough to correct this great evil? Why have 

 they not farmed these lands so that there should be an 

 increase rather than a decrease of productive energy ? Why 

 are the farming lands of almost every State in the Union — 

 on an average — weaker by a large per cent than when first 

 taken from the hand of Nature? The, ever-present, never- 

 absent, closest necessity of the farmer is fertility. Yet here 

 is the result. Every Eastern State, every Southern State, 

 every Middle State, shows it with painful distinctness. 

 Every Western State that has been devastated with fifty 

 years of American farming is beginning to show it. Why 

 is this? Let me give you my reason, — you need not accept 

 it unless you choose to. It is this : — 



The average American farmer has despised knowledge, 

 contemned study and research. He doesn't believe that 

 there is such a thing as a science of agriculture. He doesn't 

 believe that wisdom and understanding concerning farming 

 can be taught to him or his son from books and schools. 

 Look at his own schools, the country district school, the 

 only farmer's school per se in the land. What he is, they 

 are. They reflect with the faithfulness of a mirror just the 

 quality and character of the farming intellect that surrounds 



