chairman's address. 797 



lu future years this Chair will be more properly filled by one competent to 

 survey and appreciate, theoretically and practically, the past year's additions to 

 knowledge within the province of our inquiries. But the Council have decided 

 that this opening Address should be delivered, not by a man of science, but by a 

 man of affairs. As such I shall address you ; but, even in that capacity, I am 

 conscious of serious limitations. My nearest approach to practical agriculture 

 was a decade of cattle ranching in the Western States of America. There I 

 learned much more about men than about cattle. I have been since then, for 

 now some twenty years, in the public life of the country whose capital has been 

 chosen for the honour and privilege of receiving the Associf.tion. These years 

 have been spent mainly in oi'ganising voluntary effort among farmers, but, by the 

 Occident of politics, I was for over seven years responsible for the administration 

 of the newly established Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction 

 for Ireland, an institution which has justified its existence, even if only, as public 

 men have told us, since I left it. Its most important work consisted iu the 

 application of science to agriculture and the allied industries, mainly through 

 education. My way of life has thus brought me into close touch with the 

 conditions, human and material, which it will be the aim of our Sub-Section 

 to improve. 



These personal details, introduced in order to justify an Address upon the 

 relations between a sphere of thought in which I am a comparative stranger and 

 a sphere of action where 1 have no record of practical work, will also, I hope, 

 serve to make clear the point of view from which I approach my subject. My 

 definite purpose will be to establish the claim of agriculture to a wholly new 

 position in the domain of science, and the claim of science to a more intelligent 

 regard for those who, for the most part unconsciously, apply its teachings to their 

 industry. The considerations to be submitted in support of this claim will be 

 primarily neither scientitic nor practical, but political. I need hardly say that I 

 use the term in the only sense proper to the subject and the occasion; I speak as 

 a citizen upon a problem — as I think, a neglected problem — affecting the well- 

 being of that portion of the population which still follows the patriarchal calling, 

 the oldest and most honourable field of human eff'ort. 



Past Neglect and Present Urgency of the Problem. 



In some notes written two and a half years ago, at the request of an American 

 statesman, upon the problem of rural life in the United States, I sought to 

 account for the fact that a subject of such obvious and fundamental importance 

 occupies so small a space in the public mind. ' Public opinion,' I wrote, ' is 

 u town-made thing, and among Western nations the progress of civilisation 

 has riveted men's thoughts upon the great centres of industry and commerce, 

 where the most startling changes have taken place. The dweller in the modern 

 city not unnaturally believes that the many and varied improvements recently 

 effected in its conditions have fully counteracted the apprehended evils of con- 

 centration. He is confident that the rapid and cheap transit facilities which 

 enable the industrial and commercial classes to live in ever-widening suburbs will 

 realise the ideal of rus in urbe. What with improved sanitation and physical 

 culture on the one hand and the multiplication of movements for intellectual 

 advancement and social betterment on the other, the townsman of the future is 

 expected to unite the physical health and longevity of the Boeotian with the 

 mental superiority of the Athenian.' I have quoted this passage verbatim because, 

 though I could paraphrase it, I could not condense it. For the same reason I ask 

 leave to quote just one other brief passage in which I suggested an important 

 omission in the reasoning upon which the townsman's optimism seemed to be 

 based, and pointed a moral. 'It does not appear,' I wrote, 'to have been 

 sufficiently considered how far the ethical and physical health of the modern city 

 has been due to the constant influx of fresh blood irom the country. At present 

 the town makes an irresistible appeal to the spirit of enterprise, to the growing 

 craving for excitement, to the desire to live whore there is most life, But, sooner 



