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(3) The broad business relations that agriculture sustains, 

 and which may be so profoundly modified by organization and 

 legislation, both state and national, point to the need of edu- 

 cating farmers to an intelligent community of action directed 

 toward well defined and carefully considered ends. This re- 

 quires on the part of the individual wide vision and a broad- 

 minded appreciation of the conditions essential to business suc- 

 cess. The intensely individualistic and unassimilable farmer is 

 not in adjustment with his day and generation. 



(4) The social consciousness of the rural people should be 

 more fully aroused and directed to higher social aims, to the 

 end that country life institutions may be re-established. 



I shall not attempt to discuss in detail how these results are 

 to be reached but shall try to point out rather certain considera- 

 tions fundamental to the work of the college and station. All 

 our efforts to promote agricultural efficiency, if they are to 

 amount to anything, must focus on the individual. It is a 

 fundamental truth, indeed it is axiomatic, that the art of agri- 

 culture and the returns to the farm both materially and socially, 

 will never rise higher than the level of the men who own and 

 manage the land. No other class and no outside forces or 

 devices can impose prosperity upon the farmer. The initiative 

 is with him. If he wishes for better conditions for himself and 

 his family they must proceed largely out of his own efforts. 

 Neither the college of agriculture and its experiment station, 

 nor any other agency can lift him over certain obstacles to suc- 

 cess. It is a question of personal acquirement and endeavor. 

 The remark is current that the only way to redeem or build up 

 agriculture is to make it more profitable. What agency is it 

 that will make agriculture more profitable? Will government, 

 will laws, will institutions, will propaganda? These may stim- 

 ulate action, may even create opportunity, but you must have 

 men that will respond to stimulus and that are capable of enter- 

 ing into opportunity. The great paternalistic agencies of gov- 

 ernment will serve their highest purpose, not in mere gratuitous 

 help to farmers which may breed a wrong attitude on their part, 

 but rather in arousing. personal initiative and endeavor. This 

 means that educational efforts of some kind or other will be 

 our chief dependence in accomplishing agricultural betterment 

 whether we seek a more intelligent farm practice, more favor- 

 able social conditions or juster laws. 



