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City and country dwellers alike have come to a keen realization that 

 the agricultural problem is neither sectional nor territorial in its impor- 

 tance. We in Massachusetts grow neither beef, wool, wheat, nor cotton 

 in any quantity and yet our very existence, in fact our continued prosperity, 

 depends almost entirely on knowing that some one, somewhere, is interested 

 in the production of these great staple products on which we are so de- 

 pendent. 



James J. Hill, among other great leaders in industrial development, 

 has repeatedly called attention to the fact that the products of the sea, 

 the forest and the mines are fast being exhausted, and in a virile convin- 

 cing way refers to the soil as the one permanent resource, and he raises 

 the question as to what we are going to do with it in the future. 



Despite all the teachings of our colleges, the work of our experiment 

 stations, the publicity and instruction given through the agricultural 

 press, and the great work of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 3^et we face the fact today that the yield per acre of all of our great staple 

 crops has not increased materially during the last forty years. 



So I think I was justified in the outset when I contended that the 

 greatest problem in agricultural education and in American agriculture 

 today is the instruction of the farmer who is now living on the land. This 

 must be by a positive, direct, speedy process. Information must be carried 

 to him by persons especially fitted for the task and by the best demon- 

 stration methods. 



The principal agency from which all this work should radiate in a 

 state is the state college of agriculture. Land, buildings, equipment, 

 men, laboratories, etc., have been placed there at great expense. These 

 institutions should be public service institutions. Their worth and use- 

 fulness to a pretty large degree should be measured by the service they 

 render to the people who foster and support them. We have tried to 

 make our college such a public service institution. 



No man in a community is more interested in general prosperity 



than a banker. When farmers are not prosperous then bankers cannot 



be. When a farmer is charged high rates of interest or is not given fair 



^credit accommodations he is made poorer. The farmer's interest is the 



banker's interest. 



Bankers may well interest themselves in, and become familiar with 

 the soil, crops, prevailing farm practices, and agricultural resources of the 

 region in which they live. Farmers may well consult bankers on ques- 

 tions of investments, exchange, markets, etc. This interchange of informa- 

 tion will be more than mutually agreeable. Bankers must surely have the 

 confidence of farmers. 



There is much "frenzied" talk about farm finance at present. Many 

 schemes, most of which are probably unworkable, are in the air. Per- 

 sonally, I do not believe we need a system of credit for our American 

 farmers based on that necessary for the peasant farmers of Europe. It's 



