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will be to teach its pupils practical agriculture as it is carried on 
in the Gulf of Davao, together with English, reading, waiting and 
arithmetic, also the incidental trades such as carpentry, black- 
smithing, etc., which experience has proved to be necessary for 
the successful operation of a plantation. Governor Pershing, on 
a recent visit to the district, the JMindanao Herald says, ‘‘investi- 
gated the project and is of the opinion that such a school will be a 
great civilizing influence among the wdld people, and of much 
assistance to planters throughout the district.” 
Many applications for land have been received by the public 
lands board appointed under the amendments of the Organic Act 
made at last session of Congress. Land settlement will be the 
most commanding subject of government activity for some time 
to come, and the new policy is bound wdthin a few^ years to make 
a great increase in diversified agricultural products. 
FARMERS IGXORAXT OF LOSS. 
Ask any farmer how" much each dollar he has received in re- 
turns cost him to produce. Ask him whether the expenditure of 
one dollar in capital and labor returned him $1.10 or 90 cents. 
He can't answer. The debit side of the ledger is void so far as 
he is concerned, and the part played in the production of an acre 
of corn by such items as rent of land, interest and depreciation of 
machinery, man labor and horse labor, has never entered into his 
calculation. If he should sit dowm and figure out his business in 
all the minutiae of detail that is necessary for the proper conduct 
of other business undertakings, mercantile or manufacturing, he 
might find that he was actually producing crops at a loss. A 
large percentage of American farmers, probably the majority of 
them, actually are producing foodstuffs at a loss, on the basis 
of the science of modern business. 
Calculating on the basis of the original value of his land, the 
farmer is inaking money. Calculated on the current market price 
at which he could withdraw his investment and put it in interest- 
bearing industrial securities, he is losing money every time the 
seasons revolve. In many sections of the country farm values 
have doubled, even trebled in the last generation. Land that has 
been worked on the basis calculation of from $5 to $20 an acre 
must in the future respond to acreage values of from $75 to $200. 
The old generation with its obsolete methods, which has persisted 
solely on the excuse of cheap land, must give w^ay before the new 
generation. The new-comer, the man wdio would establish him- 
self as a farmer today, has to meet the changed conditions, and 
it is to these conditions that the business of farming must respond. 
