THE FARM DEMONSTRATION WORK 



money. The answer is! ^They will buy everything in sight — 

 clothing, watches, buggies, etc/ Their expenditures may not be 

 judicious, but it shows a desire to spend money to increase their 

 comforts. Experience will correct the errors." 



In the same bulletin he observed : 



"The rural toilers must first be properly nourished, clothed and 

 housed; it is the order of greatest necessity. The money to do this 

 can not be given to them, and if it was there would be no uplift. 

 They must be shown how to earn it by a better tillage of the soil and 

 how to husband their earnings by greater thrift. Low wages, a 

 small amount of work accomplished in a day, and an uneconomic 

 use of resources are features of any civilization marked by a low 

 earning capacity." 



"The only remedy that can be sucessfully applied to help all 

 the rural people, one that will be effective and immediate, is to 

 increase the net earnings of farmers, and farm laborers. The para- 

 mount issue now is how most wisely and effectively to aid all the 

 rural people. If each farmer is shown how to produce twice as much 

 to the acre as he now produces and at less cost, it will be a profit in 

 which all rural classes will share and will be the basis of the greatest 

 reform ever known to rural life." 



Although, the method and machinery were simple, it was 

 found necessary to explain it over and over again in order 

 that the public mind might see them clearly and grasp them 

 firmly. His experience doubtless confirms that of many other 

 reformers and justifies the observation that the public mind 

 is as simple as that of a child. Even in the most intelligent 

 communities it takes one simple idea a long time to burn itself 

 into the popular mind. In the presence of complex instruc- 

 tions the mass seems slow, obtuse and derelict. This practi- 

 tioner was able to diagnose collective intelligence, so he con- 

 stantly administered his helpful, homeopathic doses. In giv- 

 ing instruction on methods he said: 



"It is of the greatest importance to confine the work to a few 

 standard crops and the instruction to the basic methods and prin- 



[»s] 



