THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Dynamic Geographer 



By FRANK BUFFINGTON VROOMAN, F, R, G. S. 



(Continued) 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE lions of men and women who worked 



with their hands for their daily bread. 



BEHIND the advent of that political This idea has since been developed for 

 party which Mr. Roosevelt repre- this lowly and hardworking class of 

 sents, and through which he has men into the most useful and the most 

 done so much to develop the principles brilliant scientific organization in the 

 of Alexander Hamilton, both exten- world. It has made as well one of the 

 sively and intensively, lie in the back- most romantic contributions of human 

 ground of the ages the swarming mil- genius to the welfare of the human race, 

 lions of those who, without hope and Now the American farmer is no longer 

 with little intelligence, have tilled the a "hayseed." He is a prosperous busi- 

 soil for their own daily bread, and for ness man. In the past, farming was a 

 the daily bread of the world peasants last resource ; now it is a dignified, sci- 

 and yokels for the most part, helpless entific profession. It is such because 

 slaves in the ignorance and in the weak- we have 2,000 scientific men and trained 

 ness of their individualism. For still experts probing the secrets of Nature, 

 other centuries this unfortunate class roaming the world, solving the prob- 

 of men might have ploughed the same lems of soils, waters, seeds, weathers, 

 dismal furrows, but that just about the fertilizers, forests, plants, insects, and 

 time of the Civil War a group of poli- farm animals ; the foods, diesases, and 

 ticians began to deny the infallibility of adaptabilities of all of them, in their 

 laissez-faire and the democracy of indi- affinities and possible permutations, 

 vidualism ; to overturn that theory of It is impossible in any brief space to 

 government which is the policeman's give even the outlines of the vast work 

 theory of government ; and to dare the of this department. Its work is divided 

 innovation of loaning the resources of into many bureaus, and these, in turn, 

 the Nation (after freeing one class of into divisions, the Bureau of Plant 

 slaves) to lift from another bondage Industry alone having thirty-two. The 

 another class of slaves, which numbers Weather Bureau, c. g., besides main- 

 nowin the United States about 6,000,000 taining its central office in Washington, 

 families of those who till the soil. The with about 200 subordinate stations 

 new coterie lifted the stigma from labor scattered over the United States, Alaska, 

 and made of a railsplitter their first Hawaii, and the West Indies, coordi- 

 President, who himself broke the nates with it, by daily telegraphic re- 

 shackles from 3,000,000 slaves. Lincoln ports, observations made in Canada on 

 had not been President a year before he the north, Mexico on the south, in the 

 signed the Homestead Act of Galusha Azores and Iceland, the western coast 

 Grow, which gave the settler a chance of Europe, European and Asiatic Rus- 

 over the speculator, which opened up sia, covering every day practically the 

 the enormous area of the great West, whole of the inhabited portions of the 

 and gave free homes and farms to mil- North American Continent, the North 

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