THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



ber in the canton, but rarely reached or moved by the larger public 

 opinion of the State or the nation, and then only by personal con- 

 tact. The general viewpoint is one of doubt and suspicion. If, 

 however, one of their number can be induced to plant a trial field, 

 all will watch it closely, and if he succeeds the people will at once 

 swing from a stubborn doubt to an unreasoning faith, and they be- 

 come the most zealous of converts. After you have proven your 

 work for two or three seasons some way it is noised abroad among 

 these people, and they are ready to accept it at the first opportunity." 



"It is an easy proposition to enlist the masses in the army of 

 reform, if wisely managed; but impossible; if undertaken along the 

 lines usually pursued. Frequently the first farmer in a community 

 where a demonstration is to be made is secured by furnishing some 

 improved seed and showing how to plant and work it so as to main- 

 tain its vigor and enable him to sell seed to his neighbor. With 

 success in his first trial he becomes an earnest advocate of the co- 

 operative plan. Thus the influences gather force and soon the reform 

 has attained mighty proportions and a state has been revolutionized." 



"Science loudly boasted its power to unfold the mysteries of the 

 soil; it grandly pointed to the water, the atmosphere and the sun- 

 beams and claimed the power to harness these to the chariots of 

 agriculture, and bring to the earth a wealth of production, fabulous 

 and inconceivable; but science in its relation to agriculture has, as 

 yet, been mainly a beautiful dream and a gilded vision. So far as 

 the masses are concerned, it is a failure of application and not of 

 merit. Relief came, but in a way never anticipated by the people. 

 The people expected relief by some miracle of finance, a relief with- 

 out toil, the bounty of the nation or the gift of God. But when told 

 that permanent help could only come by human effort, that they 

 must work out their own salvation, just as prosperity, liberty and 

 civilization can never be donated to anyone, but must be wrought out, 

 fought out and lived out, till they are part of the being of the people 

 who possess them, they were amazed." 



"In 1886 a movement was made to settle a tract of land in 

 southwestern Louisiana, as large as the State of Connecticut, with 

 sturdy immigrants from the northwestern States. Thousands of 

 circulars were issued and hundreds of prospective settlers came. 

 The natives of the country were stock men. They were not farmers, 



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