THE SCIENTIFIC FAKMEU. 31 



scientific knowledge is extremely expensive, and in a new 

 country, with insufficient capital, there were bettor induce- 

 ments for enterprise in other directions. It was also the fact 

 that our great areas of virgin soils enabled us to make money 

 while employing wasteful methods, just as the earliest users of 

 the steam engine made money by the use of machinery whose 

 employment now would insure prompt bankruptcy to the 

 user. Our competition while using even these wasteful 

 methods has compelled the older European countries to make 

 use of science in reducing costs to a degree of which we have 

 little conception. Now our ow^n virgin areas having all been 

 occupied, the owners of our partially-exhausted soils are 

 brought into competition with the farmers on virgin soils of 

 the tropics and the southern hemisphere, and we feel their 

 competition just as the European farmers have long felt ours. 

 Among our own farmers some have been quick to see and 

 utilize the economies which science suggests, and are pro- 

 ducing cheaper than their neighbors. Whenever produce 

 sells "low" for a considerable time that fact is usually evidence 

 that some are employing cheaper methods than others, and 

 that their product is supplying the market. Those who do 

 not employ as good methods are crowded out. It is in this 

 way that nature kills off the weak. 



It is not necessary or usually possible that the successful 

 farmer should be a scientific man. It requires a lifetime to 

 become a good scientist or a good farmer; very few men can 

 be both. What is necessary is that the farmer shall make use 

 of the discoveries of science to lessen costs of production, and 

 the farmer who does this is a scientific farmer, no matter how 

 he gets the necessary information. 



In discussing the larger aspects of farm life we reached the 

 conclusion that the "Hope of the farmer is in greater knowl- 

 edge." The literature of the Patrons of Husbandry says that 

 "education is the corner-stone of the Grange." Without 

 some further explanation both these expressions are mere 

 platitudes — meaning vague statements which no one will dis- 



