SECRETARY'S REPORT. 61 



imnumbored products which commerce knows are directly or 

 indirectly the product of the earth, and most of these the direct 

 product of the labor of man. 



Without agriculture civilization is impossible. The Green- 

 landers are christianized but not civilized, and never can be 

 where they live. They have mines of valuable minerals ; their 

 seas abound in fish and seals and whales, all exhaustless sources 

 of wealth, but the barren mountains and the eternal glaciers 

 forbid the cultivation of the earth. And the humanizing 

 influence of luxuriant crops and of labor on the soil is wanting. 

 It is a want for which nothing can compensate. It is not in the 

 icy North alone that this truth is illustrated. Even mines of 

 gold so rich as to draw men from the cultivation of the soil, 

 have proved a curse in every place. They will, in the end, not 

 only tend to vice and degradation, but to poverty. It is only 

 the riches of the soil that give real strength and resource to any 

 people. What grows is something real — no mere representative 

 of value, like printed paper, yellow dust or glittering stones. It 

 is food and raiment and shelter, and these are the only real 

 values. It was not our money that carried us through the life- 

 struggle of the last four years. We were not a rich people in 

 surplus money capital, which has always been reckoned the 

 sinews of war. This was understood abroad. It was the vaunt 

 of the English papers that we had not money enough to carry 

 on the war for two months, and that they would not lend us a 

 shilling. They knew the necessity of money to the English 

 people who must import their living, but they knew nothing of 

 the resources and power of a people with such a boundless and 

 exhaustless soil as we possess. It was the boast of the old 

 Roman general that he could raise an army by stamping his foot 

 upon the earth. Americans stamped their feet upon the soil, 

 and not only raised armies such as Rome never saw, but clothed 

 and fed them, and amid the very din of arms, sent millions of 

 bushels across the water to feed hungry Englishmen — whole 

 ship-loads even as a gift. Agriculture has proved our profit in 

 time of peace, our defence and support in time of war. It has 

 given us strength to battle for freedom, and it has saved us from 

 the want and suffering so incident to war. It has certainly 

 given us dignity as a nation. While our soil gave us food and 



