39 
nicii! stations should take tbe lead In making those things known and In bring 
Ing the Government to a realization of thai condition. Surely this Impoverished 
soil has some place In the national economy. There is some way of turning it to 
good account The law Qf diminished returns as sot forth in our standard 
works of political economy makes it entirely clear thai the scale of wages Is 
determined by the land cultivated without profit, or, to pul it In another way. the 
land cultivated at the bighesl rate i f expenditure, in my judgment the per- 
manently profitable coudition of farm land is considerably menaced by tin- area 
of impoverished soil in the country. So far as my observation goes, but little 
attention has been given to this condition as Influencing the general conditions 
of rural life. I am persuaded, however, that it no1 only tends to keep down 
farm wages, but that it harbors an inferior population and from nearly every 
point of view threatens the most important conditions of rural life. 
I recognize, however, that not all of this Impoverished soil is hopelessly so. 
.'This leads me to say that Intelligent operation of the farm is necessary for any 
margin of profit This Intelligent operation and management is impossible with- 
out education. Some farmers have learned the lesson of profitable farming 
after an experience of twenty-five years. That experience was valuable, hut a 
very expensive education. The purpose now is to give i<» the young farmer 
while in his teens, an education that will enrich him with the experience of other 
men gained after a long period of years. In other words, he is asked to invest 
very much less money in his education than he will pay for his experience. At 
the same time his era of profit will begin at 25 instead of at 50. The movement 
for agricultural education is still in its infancy. We are still in the apologetic 
stage. We need a propaganda accompanied by a demonstration that shall con- 
vince men that intelligence properly applied will produce results on the farm just 
as certainly as elsewhere. 
As hearing upon this question of profits I recognize that there are other ele- 
ments. The question of markets, their availability, the long or short haul, good 
loads, methods of transportation, and similar elements often enter into the ques- 
tion of the profit of agriculture. The tendency up to date has been to lay the 
entire burden of all these things upon the local community. It may he that it 
shall always remain so. This may add to the expense of local production while 
not making it clear that some obscure places are in any better condition. 
The above-named particulars are sufficient to arouse our thought as to the 
seriousness of the condition that confronts a growing civilization. If conditions 
were not serious there would be no necessity for much ado about the importance 
of agricultural education or the necessity of government aid in such matters. 
The seriousness is not a new phase of the condition. The only thing new is that 
the recognition of this condition is more general than heretofore. The awaken- 
ing among us of our convictions upon this subject, accompanied by a general 
desire to make such improvement in conditions as shall largely justify our 
efforts, is a most encouraging feature. This is justification for a stronger appeal 
that I can not make to the representatives of the great cause of technical and 
industrial education. Let me bring renewed emphasis, therefore, upon one or 
two things as we move along. 
III. I refer to the well-recognized problems of connecting education with farm- 
ing. All here agree that we have passed the time for unintelligent farming. 
Indeed, it would have been better if we had never reached that time. The fact 
remains, however, that a large portion of the agricultural work of the country 
has been a blind trust in the moon, or in Providence, or in luck. The multitudes, 
however, have long believed that the farmer's boy needed an education if he 
proposed to be a lawyer or a minister. We appeal for an equally abiding con- 
viction that the boy who is to be a farmer must have an education. The one 
idea seemed to be that the only way to learn to do a thing was by doing it in an 
unintelligent and expensive way. The modern idea is that we shall learn to do 
things by doing them under competent supervision and in a most economic way. 
The agricultural college therefore is an expensive thing in itself, because it 
centralizes all the expensiveness of ignorance under an organization that pro- 
poses to remove ignorance and supplant it with intelligence and skill. The 
fallacy that unintelligent men can do farm work needs to be entirely removed. 
The truth is that it requires less intelligence to dig a ditch for a sewer in the 
city than to prepare for a tile drain on the farm. In the one case there is an 
association with other laborers, the foreman, and a large amount of concen- 
trated supervision. In the other case there is no such association, but a demand 
for intelligence that can supervise itself. Even the ordinary operations of the 
farm require men who are equal to their own emergencies and who can assume 
