302 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1421 



have as favorable transportation. Most coun- 

 tries have cheaper labor. We must overcome 

 their advantages by our knowledge which must 

 be developed through research. 



When we find an economy in feeding or some 

 method of reducing cost per bushel or when we 

 invent an improved harvester or perfect a silo, 

 or when we find more direct and efficient meth- 

 ods of marketing, we are able to reduce our 

 selling price and thus strengthen our hold on 

 foreign markets. When we allow a mysterious 

 disease or inefficient methods to increase the 

 price we must ask whether we are losing our 

 hold on foreign markets. 



We must not forget that in other countries 

 strenuous efforts also are being made to de- 

 vise better methods through research in order 

 to take the foreign markets away from us and 

 even to invade our home markets. Thus far 

 we have developed only a background of in- 

 formation regarding the great economic ques- 

 tions. We have hardly crossed the threshold in 

 research concerning the adaptation of produc- 

 tion to requirements and other such great eco- 

 nomic problems. 



Other vitally important subjects waiting to 

 be studied as they deserve include the re- 

 forestation on farms and the betterment 

 of rural life. There are many questions 

 relating to the comfort and happiness of people 

 who live in the country that are becoming con- 

 stantly more acute. These include the whole 

 sphere of the work of farm women. The failure 

 to solve these questions is resulting in some 

 of the best of type of farmers moving from 

 the country to the city. Much needs to be 

 done to show such people how to make country 

 life as satisfactory as city life. 



One other of many very important problems 

 in need of research may be mentioned, — the 

 conservation of soil fertility. This is the most 

 important of our natural resources. It is easily 

 removed but not easily replaced. We gather 

 crops very much as we harvest lumber. Most 

 people know how we have accomplished such 

 an enormous production of lumber during the 

 past few decades. We simply went into the 

 forests which had required hundreds of years 

 to grow and we took the trees that were wanted 

 and even gave scant consideration to the wel- 



fare of other trees which might have become 

 useful in later years. We have not considered 

 how succeeding generations will get their lum- 

 ber. We have proceeded on the basis that we 

 might as well take it all. We point to our lum- 

 ber kings as examples of great business ability. 

 What will be said of them fifty years from now 

 when the people of that day want lumber and 

 find that the accumulated growth of centuries 

 over large areas has been destroyed by our 

 generation and even without much effort to 

 start new trees for use in the future? Our 

 cereal production has been carried along on 

 about the same lines. If present practices con- 

 tinue this nation will awaken some day to the 

 fact that we are more like arid Egypt or Baby- 

 lon than the wonderful, fertile country that 

 our historians tell us was discovered by Colum- 

 bus. 



Furthermore, we are allowing many square 

 miles of good farm land each year to be washed 

 away by our streams. This erosion supple- 

 mented by surface wash amounts to hundreds 

 of millions of tons annually. These losses 

 represent stupendous values which doubtless 

 could be largely reduced through furthei* re- 

 search. 



No one can tell what wonderful improve- 

 ments in agriculture may be revealed in the 

 future. We easily think of possible further' 

 advances along the lines we know about but 

 these vaaj be made secondary by other advances 

 that we can not now even think of. Some per- 

 sons believe that beneficial changes are yet to 

 come in agriculture which are no less profound 

 than the changes in transportation caused by 

 the flying machine or in communication caused 

 by the wireless telephone. Those two improve- 

 ments are epoch making but were hardly with- 

 in our range of thinking a generation ago. 



I will not be so rash as to suggest that a tin 

 Lizzie ever will give milk, but I will predict 

 that some day power for the farm which now 

 constitutes a chief item of expense will be 

 obtained cheaply from the winds that blow over 

 the farm. And with this cheap power I pre- 

 dict that some day we will produce the best of 

 building materials, at lowest cost, from almost 

 any soil. It may be aluminum. 



I will predict also that if our plant and 



