BUSINESS ASPECTS OF FARMING 69 



and marketing, foreign trade, foreign exchange, credits, and finances. 

 These are some of the matters which must have consideration, not 

 only separately but relatively, and if farmers are to be heard on these 

 matters they must affiliate with organizations that will represent them. 

 The organization of the Farm Bureau, county, state and national, is 

 a step in the right direction; but mark this well, the doctrine of 

 opportunism will neither carry very far, nor long endure, nor will it 

 succeed in rallying to its support other kindred organizations. The 

 ills that beset us are not so difficult that they can't be cured, but we 

 must understand them. The Farm Bureaus must carefully diagnose 

 our case and formulate a policy of treatment, not only to make known 

 to its members and others the principles for which it stands and the 

 goal it strives to reach, but to mark its own progress and avoid 

 meandering from its course. If this be done; if a plan be conceived 

 in wisdom, not aimed to subvert other lines of enterprise, but deter- 

 mined to remove the handicaps under which agriculture, our greatest 

 art and our master science, has so long labored ; and if the farmers 

 and stockmen of the country will catch the vision of a united coopera- 

 tive movement for their own and their country's best interest and 

 consecrate themselves to its support, we may with confidence turn our 

 faces towards the dawn of a brighter day. 



At this time and at this place we may ask, What part in this 

 program will be taken by the College of Agriculture ? Let me remind 

 you that these times of adversity are not without their silver lining; 

 they are times of real progress. It was after the hard experiences of 

 the period from 1889 to 1897 that the renaissance of agricultural edu- 

 cation began, the growth, development, and progress of which have 

 been without a parallel anywhere, in any field of learning in the world. 

 It was then that with but nineteen students regularly enrolled in the 

 agricultural course, an appropriation was asked of the state, and given 

 by it, to erect a building to be devoted to the study of agriculture, 

 which should be the largest yet built for that purpose. They were 

 men of vision who asked it and worked for it, as were also they who 

 gave it. Let us not forget, however, that the world moves; and 

 among other things come, faster than we realize but never fast 

 enough, the changes in our curricula. Each generation sets up a 

 new list of requirements and each is deemed necessary and essential ; 

 and perhaps at the time and under the conditions prevailing some of 

 them are. Were I to pass a general criticism on the schooling of 

 today, it would be this, and it applies all the way from our grade 

 schools on up : that in fitting a student for a particular line of work 



