682 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 540. 



numei'ary, eleemosynary and parasitic oc- 

 cupations ; but agriculture is basic. 



Other occupations have had their day in 

 the public appreciation. All of them have 

 been born out of agriculture. Tubal- Cain 

 was the descendant of Adam. The greatest 

 of public problems are to come with the 

 rise of the agricultural peoples. Just be- 

 cause it is basic, agriculture has been con- 

 servative and patient. Fundamental strata 

 are likely to be azoic ; but in great world- 

 movements they are also likely to rise per- 

 manently to the top. 



The farmer is a wealth-producer. There- 

 fore, his importance in the body politic is 

 primary. He deals with elemental forces. 

 As a wealth-producer, he will come to have 

 a larger voice in the expenditure and Avaste 

 of wealth in maintaining armaments of 

 war. All his instincts are of peace. 



The public problems of agriculture have 

 been slow to gain recognition. The agri- 

 cultural questions that we customarily dis- 

 cuss are those of the individual farmer. 

 The burden of our teaching has been that 

 the farmer must be a better farmer. Only 

 in recent years has it come to be fully 

 recognized that agricultural problems are 

 of the greatest national and governmental 

 significance. Consider how recent is the 

 Land Grant Act, the secretaryship of 

 agriculture in the President's cabinet, the 

 experiment station act, the origin of a 

 definite farmers' institute movement, the 

 development at public expense of fertilizer 

 and feed controls and other policing poli- 

 cies, the making of liberal grants of public 

 money for specific agricultural iises. 



Governmental fiscal policies have been 

 shaped primarily for other occupations, as, 

 for example, the tariff for protection. This 

 is primarily a manufacturer's policy. It 

 matured with the rise of concentrated 

 manufacturing. One of the stock argu- 

 ments of the protectionist when addressing 

 farmers is that any policy that aids manu- 



facturing interest must indirectly aid them. 

 I am not here to discuss or to criticize tariff 

 legislation, but it is apparent that such 

 legislation is only secondarily of benefit to 

 agriculture. It has been the history of 

 institutions that special and organized in- 

 terests receive attention before care is 

 given to the common people and the masses. 



We have really not endeavored, as a 

 people, to solve our technical agricultural 

 problems until within the present genera- 

 tion. We have escaped the problems by 

 moving on to the west. Thereby we have 

 fallen into the habit of treating sjonptoms 

 rather than causes, as the policeman does 

 when he orders the offender to 'move on,' 

 and leaves the real difficulty for some one 

 else to solve. Even yet, farmers are mov- 

 ing on to find land that is not depleted and 

 regions free of blights and of pests. The 

 real development of agriculture lies in de- 

 veloping the old areas, not in discovering 

 new ones. When virgin land can no longer 

 be had, scientific agriculture will be born. 

 An isolated island develops something like 

 a perfected agriculture, as one may see in 

 Bermuda or Jersey. The earth is an island : 

 in time it will be developed. 



As agriculture comprises a multitude of 

 different businesses, everj^here touching 

 many sciences and having contact with 

 many public questions, so it is impossible 

 for one person adequately to state even its 

 present and pressing questions. I have 

 been in the habit of inquiring of farmers, 

 students and colleagues what they consider 

 the agricultural problems to be. ]\Iany of 

 the problems that they have stated to me 

 are temporary, local or incidental. Others 

 are common to many occupations, having 

 to do with the general constitution of so- 

 ciety and the general trend of economic 

 events. In this paper I have tried to as- 

 semble statements of such questions as 

 appear to me best to illustrate the complex 

 nature of the subject before us. I wish I 



