SELECTED SAYINGS 



will touch the lines of deftness, mechanical skill will become universal 

 and thrift and alertness will transform the toilers into captains of 

 industry." 



"Your mission is to make a great common people and thus re- 

 adjust the map of the world. The keystone of American civilization 

 is the home; by some mysterious social convulsion it has become 

 loosened; you can reach it from the pedestal of the common school, 

 push it to its place and cement it in a way that will be enduring." 



FROM YEARBOOK OF AGRICULTURE, FOR 1908 



"A prosperous, intelligent, and contented rural population is, 

 therefore, essential to our national perpetuity. The world's experi- 

 ence has shown that the best way to secure this is to encourage the 

 division of all the lands into small farms, each owned and operated 

 by one family." 



"There are two ways to look at a small farm. One view — the 

 common one — is that it is a place to make a living, but rather a 

 hard place, and should be sold as soon as anything easier is found; 

 the other is that the ownership of the land is a mark of honor, that a 

 patent to land is a title of nobility, a right to sovereignty." 



"The great objections to the single-crop system are that it limits 

 knowledge, narrows citizenship, and does not foster home building, 

 but does promote commercial farming. It lacks the element of 

 safety ; if the one cash crop fails, everything goes — living, clothing, 

 and all. It might be asked why the many small farmers of the South 

 did not diversify their crops. Farmers cannot produce any cash 

 crop they like. It must be something recognized by the local market, 

 and the large planters make the local market." 



"A lowering of country life drives out the better classes just as 

 an inferior coinage usurps the place of the more valuable." 



"The practical and sane way of accomplishing the result is to 

 induce the farmers to try better methods and note the result in im- 

 proving their farms, — to make tillage less expensive and produc- 

 tion more certain, to double the crops to the acre and halve the cost. 

 While the farmer successfully solves the problems of the farm 

 his experience widens and he becomes a broader man, till he is 

 broad enough to size up the whole situation and has the means to 

 execute his plan. As men broaden they have higher aspirations 



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