THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



more newspapers; all very good and worthy of commendation. Still 

 others call for more Farmers' Institutes and additional agricultural 

 colleges. Excellent suggestions; but every highway may be as good 

 as a Roman road, with a free rural delivery mail box and a telephone 

 at every crossing, and the box stuffed with newspapers; you may 

 hold a Farmers' Institute at every third house and establish an agri- 

 cultural college on every section of land in the United States, and 

 the flow of young men from the country to the city will not be 

 arrested in the least, so long as the earning capacity of the average 

 city laborer, or clerk, or professional man, is at least five-fold of 

 what the same talent can command in the country." 



' ^ This is the key to agricultural reform ; more power and better 

 machinery on the farm, and more accomplished in a day, heavier 

 mules and more of them. Away with the half-a-mule farmer and 

 convert the one-mule farmer into a four-mule farmer. What revolu- 

 tionized manufacturing in the United States and made us the first of 

 productive nations? More power and less hand work. What will 

 hold the boys on the farm and multiply the wealth of our farmers? 

 More power and less hand work." 



"Fifty years since the mechanical industries were hand crafts, 

 slow, cumbersome, non-remunerative. The transformation was not 

 made by placing books on the value of steam and electricity in the 

 common schools, but by building factories all over the country and 

 absorbing the business. The machine harnessed to power showed 

 that it could do better and cheaper work than done by hand methods. 

 Old methods were swept away, and lo ! we are leading the world in 

 mechanism. The sewing machine, the mower and the reaper have 

 come into general use, not by writing books about them, but by 

 placing them in the hands of the people for trial." 



"The question of successfully interesting the farmers is a per- 

 sonal equation. First, they must have some knowledge of the men 

 who are managing the movement and make out the instructions. 

 Second, the men who act as field agents must be practical farmers; 

 no use in sending a carpenter to tell a tailor how to make a coat, even 

 if he is pretty well up on coats. The tailor won't follow. The farmer 

 must be a recognized leader, progressive, influential and able to carry 

 public opinion with him. Public opinion is brought into harmony 

 and made forceful by the support of the press and the cooperation 



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