214 Twenty-Fesst Biennial Repobt 



tlie necessity of a conservation of tlie people themselves 

 in relation to thW natural resources. In a word our gov- 

 ernment first undertook to protect our property values 

 by witlidrawing a large part of the public domain from 

 exploitation, and several years after this step had been 

 taken to protect the property values, the government 

 directed its attention towards the protection of the peo- 

 ple themselves against their growing poverty as the re- 

 sult of wastefulness by a nation-wide educational cam- 

 paign in scientifio and more efficient agricultural 

 methods. 



The older members of the Association who were 

 present doubtless can remember the time when the aver- 

 age yield of wheat and com f roni the lands of western 

 Kentucky was from 50 to 100 per cent, greater than it 

 is today; when the machinery and implements now in 

 use in agriculture were unheard of. And yet as inven- 

 tive skill has lessened the difficulty of agricultural pro- 

 duction, the annual yield has lessened almost in propor- 

 tion. This fact is true of almost the entire country. The 

 once wonderfully productive prairie land of middle Il- 

 linois has been so impoverished by unintelligent culti- 

 vation during the last sixty years, that the annual yield 

 is little over half what it was when the country was 

 first thrown open to settlement. The working out of 

 the problems of efficiency has always fallen upon the 

 shoulders of the enlightened few. The solution of this 

 problem has been undertaken by the various states, and 

 by the United States, and the solution has been found, 

 but the people have been slow to grasp the work that 

 has been done for them. As the natural fertility of our 

 soil has been exploited and wasted, the people them- 

 selves have fallen into careless and wasteful methods, 

 and the economic position of the farmer has been rapidly 

 lowered by reason of his lessening efficiency, until today 

 one of the most tragic pictures in our whole economic 

 system is the steady, inevitable lowering of the position 

 of the agricultural classes. 



It is this problem that to my mind makes the sub- 

 ject of this discussion, "The Relation of the Banker to 

 Agriculture," a very live and very vital one. I am 

 speaking particularly of western Kentucky. Agricul- 



