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States of the Union. The science of agriculture, before almost ab- 

 solutely unknown by the masses of the people has come to be in 

 some measure at last respected and ven honored. The agricultural 

 necessities of the country have been made more apparent. To some 

 thousands of young men the stupendous fact is now taught that na- 

 ture will not be cheated of her rights, and that for everything you 

 take out of the soil, you must put something back, or the time will 

 come when nature's cashier will cease to honor your drafts, and you 

 will end in bankruptcy. 



And what a field for such teaching there is ; look at the statistics 

 of our Agricultural Department. In every one of the States, in the 

 North, in the South, in the East and even in the West, the yield per 

 acre of all the great cereal crops has been steadily declining since 

 the early years of the Century. The American farmer has impover- 

 ished the soil, and then gone West. It is not certain that this pro- 

 cess has even yet been arrested. The last statistics available for 

 general comparison are not very reassuring. If the New England 

 States have held their own, it has not been by means of improved ag- 

 riculture, but by the general establishment of manufactories. The 

 same process has been going on that converted many of the fertile 

 lands of Virginia into pine barrens. As we all know too well thou- 

 sands of acres in the Eastern States have been abandoned as practic- 

 ally worthless. Meanwhile the streams of immigration and emigra- 

 tion have been going on. The Irish and the Germans have come to 

 Massachusetts ; but the farmers of Massachusetts have gone to New 

 York and Ohio, the people of New York and Ohio have gone to In- 

 diana and Illinois, and the people of Indiana and Illinois have gone 

 to Kansas and the farther West. Ever westward has been the move- 

 ment until the current has been arrested on the slopes of the Pacific. 

 At length there is no West, to whose virgin soil we may flee. Our 

 farmers no longer have the choice between remaining poor or moving 

 toward the setting sun ; they have the other alternative, the one 

 which has long confronted the farmers of 4 the old world, remaining 

 poor or a more perfect ^knowledge of the conditions under which na- 

 ture will yield a bounteous and profitable return. 



Then look at another fact. In many regions of our country the 

 same desolating process is going on that has reduced the fertile fields 

 about the Mediterranean to sterile deserts. The trees are being 

 swept away and thus we attempt to frustrate the methods by which 

 an all wise Providence designed that the moisture in the deep soil 



