SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 249 



study much more closely than has yet been done the social organi- 

 zation of the country, and inquire whether its institutions are 

 now really as useful to the farmer as they should be, or whether 

 they should not be given a new direction and a new impulse, 

 for no farmer's life should lie merely within the boundary of his 

 farm. This study must be of the East and the West, the North 

 and the South; for the needs vary from place to place. 



First in importance, of course, comes the effort to secure the 

 mastery of production. Great strides toward this end have 

 already been taken over the larger part of the United States; 

 much remains to be done, but much has been done; and the 

 debt of the nation to the various agencies of agricultural im- 

 provement for so great an advance is not to be overstated. But 

 we cannot halt here. The benefits of high social organization 

 include such advantages as ease of communication, better 

 educational facilities, increased comfort of living, and those 

 opportunities for social and intellectual life and intercourse, 

 of special value to the young people and to the women, which 

 are as yet chiefly to be had in centers of population. All this 

 must be brought within the reach of the farmers who live on the 

 farms, of the men whose labor feeds and clothes the towns and 

 cities. 



BENEFITS RESULTING FROM CO-OPERATION 



Farmers must learn the vital need of co-operation with one 

 another. Next to this comes co-operation with the government 

 and the government can best give its aid through associations of 

 farmers rather than through the individual farmer; for there is 

 no greater agricultural problem than that of delivering to the 

 farmer the large body of agricultural knowledge which has been 

 accumulated by the national and state governments and by the 

 agricultural colleges and schools. Nowhere has the govern- 

 ment worked to better advantage than in the South, where the 

 work done by the Department of Agriculture in connection with 

 the cotton growers of the southwestern states has been phenom- 



