danger, its conservation, its improvement to the highest point of pro- 

 ductivity promised by scientific intelligence and practical experiment, 

 appears to be a last command of any political economy worthy of the 

 name. 



If this patriotic gospel is to make headway, it must be by just such 

 organized missionary work as is today begun. It can not go on and 

 conquer if imposed from without. It must come to represent the fixed 

 idea of the people 's mind, their determination and their hope. It can 

 not be incorporated in our practical life by the dictum of any individ- 

 ual or any officer of nation or state in his official capacity. It needs 

 the co-operation of all the influences, the help of every voice, the com- 

 mendation of nation and state that has been the strength and in- 

 spiration of every worthy work on American soil for one hundred 

 and twenty years. We return, for our gathering in council and for 

 our plan of action for the future, to the model given us by the fathers. 

 State and Nation are represented here, without jealousy or any ambL 

 tion of superiority on either side, to apply to the consideration of our 

 future such co-operation as that out of which this nation was born, 

 and by which it has won to worthy manhood. Reviving the spirit of 

 the days that created- our Constitution, the days that carried us 

 through civil conflict, the spirit by which all our enduring work in the 

 world has been wrought, taking thought as Washington and Lincoln 

 took thought, only for the highest good of all the people, we may, 

 as a result of the deliberations held and the conclusions reached here 

 today, give new meaning to our future ; new luster to the ideal of a 

 republic of living federated states ; shape anew the fortunes of this 

 country, and enlarge the borders of hope for all mankind. 



** 4 

 THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE 



Perhaps no one has had a better opportunity to know about the soil 

 of this nation than James Wilson, the Secretary of Agriculture. He 

 made the following; remarks: 



"The paper read by Mr. Hill this morning made a very deep im- 

 pression upon me. The greatest asset we have in the United States is 

 our soil ; we are destroying that as rapidly as we can, and the oldest 

 settled part of the United States has made the most progress in the 

 destruction of our soil. Down on the Gulf coast the land has been 

 peopled longer than the upper part of the Mississippi Valley. The 

 heavy rainfalls, and the perpetual cultivation and growing of crops 

 have helped erosion, and the soil has been destroyed in that way. 

 It is going off very, very rapidly. The cure is a system of agriculture 

 that will keep the soil filled with plant food, organic matter, humus. 

 That is the cure ; that is the way to keep up the soil. Somebody once 

 asked an English gardener how he got such a fine lawn. He had a 

 beautiful grass lawn which attracted attention. He said, 'We weeded, 

 and we weeded; we manured and we manured, for eight hundred 

 years ' ; and that is the way they got it. ' ' 



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