8 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The determination of a nation's success, either in peace or 

 war, is more contingent upon food than upon any other one 

 point. The past year, which has seen the most severe fighting 

 and the end of the war, has brought home to us the great part 

 which agriculture has played in bringing hostilities to a success- 

 ful conclusion. Not only have food crops been produced in 

 large quantities in this country, but along with these the other 

 great staples which play such an important part in the supply 

 of the world. Cotton, hemp, wool and fats of all kinds have 

 been produced in increasing amounts, and the farmers of the 

 world, forced to face the most serious obstacles, have responded 

 wonderfully to the call for their products. 



The readjustment of farm conditions the world over makes 

 the results even more notable, for in many cases the entire 

 agricultural population has been wiped out, and has had to be 

 replaced with inexperienced persons, while the women and 

 children have responded most nobly. In Europe particularly 

 have these changes been most notable, for here agriculture had 

 resolved itself down to a very exact science, depending largely 

 upon certain types of persons for success, rather than upon the 

 broader and more elastic system, as in America. The loss in 

 Europe of some of its great specialties, as the seed business, 

 certain phases of the live-stock industry and some other factors 

 is going to be very difficult to adjust, and it will be years 

 before Europe gets back to where it was before the war; in 

 consequence the rest of the countries which had depended upon 

 Europe for these specialties will long feel the deficit. 



I speak somewhat at length on this because of its probable 

 effect upon America, for it is upon us who have felt the burden 

 of war Jess heavily that the task of making up what the war 

 has cost to agriculture will fall. We shall have to grow many 

 of the things which we formerly bought from others. We shall 

 have to supply to others what we were in the habit of pur- 

 chasing. Then, too, we shall undoubtedly have to absorb 

 among us a rather new agricultural population, made up partly 

 of immigrants and partly of our own people, who will seek to 

 readjust their conditions. In any event, there will be an 

 activity in agriculture during the next few years which will be 

 very difficult to keep within legitimate bounds unless it is 

 guided carefully. A long period after the civil war was marked 



