io 4 THE FARMER AND THE NEW DAY 



perts; to cast aside the skill, the knowledge, the fore- 

 sight, the judgment of these specialists, fallible and im- 

 perfect as they are, would undermine immediately 

 any attempt to operate a permanent agricultural pol- 

 icy. No one of these interests can make or execute a 

 policy by itself. Neither the individual farmer nor the 

 voluntary associations of farmers, nor the government 

 itself is sufficient for the task. All must be taken into 

 account and must be brought together. 



An Agricultural Program and the Food Supply. So 

 far as we know, the first effort in America to outline 

 in conference a program for agricultural activities that 

 took as its starting point the food needs of the time, 

 was made in St. Louis in April, 1917, under the leader- 

 ship of Secretary Houston of the Department of Agri- 

 culture. (The major part of the St. Louis statement 

 appears in the back of this book. See Appendix III.) 

 This statement is not an ideal outline of a rural pro- 

 gram. It was not the result of a conference of all the 

 agricultural agencies, but only of a part of them. It 

 was made hastily. It was frankly a war measure. It 

 did not compass the entire agricultural problem. But 

 it was nevertheless extremely significant, so significant 

 that it will probably go down into history as the turn- 

 ing point in American agriculture. Before it was 

 adopted, we had no comprehensive, consistent agricul- 

 tural program worked out by a responsible group of 

 men and fitted into the food needs of the people. The 

 St. Louis statement was in itself a food supply pro- 

 gram; it was made in conference; it called for central 

 national committees of both farmers and experts; it 

 advocated complete machinery, national, state and lo- 

 cal, for carrying out the program. It is interesting to 

 note that the machinery urged was in the form of agri- 



