(306 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



Corn Belt, as I was, at a time when it was the common utter- 

 ance of many farmers that their soil did not need manure, 

 and that it was cheaper to move the sheds than to haul the 

 manure. 



He lived to see the question of fertility a growing one. He 

 lived to see the need of commercial fertilizers cross the Mississippi, 

 in spots and he spoke, as he did as president of the National 

 Conservation Congress, as he always did, "for the voiceless 

 soil." 



There is a revelation as to the bent of our old friend's mind in 

 that expression, "the voiceless soil." To him the soil was not 

 dead at all, only dumb. It was the stuff of human life. Sow it 

 with dragon's teeth, and it will produce a crop of armed men 

 who will fall upon and destroy one another. 



Ignorance, injustice, oppression these are the dragon's teeth 

 with which our American soil must not be sown or they will 

 spring up armed men like those who are destroying each other 

 in the Old World to-day. In the preface of this little book, 

 which is his last word to the farm folks of America, Uncle Henry 

 said: 



The conviction has been growing upon me of late years that the biggest 

 thing on the farm is not the land nor the live-stock, but the farm folk, the 

 people who live on the farm and out in the open country. These letters 

 therefore will not be agricultural, but human. Do you know that the big- 

 gest thing in life, whether in city or country, is just to be a fine human 

 being interested in all things that interest or should interest human beings? 



SLOGAN CENTERED ABOUT HAPPINESS 



His slogan for years was Good Farming, Clear Thinking, Clean 

 Living, but it centered about the welfare and happiness of 

 people. Good farming, that the life of the family might be a 

 well-nourished life economically, and that the soil be conserved; 

 clear thinking, that it might be intellectual, and not like that of 

 sheep and goats that nourish a blind life upon the soil; clean 

 living, because the life that is not based upon righteousness rots 

 and makes both good farming and clear thinking impossible. 



On this all-embracing text did Uncle Henry Wallace preach 

 quietly, persistently, sanely and effectively for decades to one 

 of the greatest audiences in America. What greater pulpit 



