FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
183 
with your crops. I know of no region in 
which there is not some damaging menace 
and the incursions of unusual pests. You 
are not single in this matter. All these 
difficulties become the means of develop¬ 
ing strong men and women if the diffi¬ 
culties are conquered. You will conquer 
them or you will lie down. Just now 
I you have the citrus canker. I have been 
much impressed with the way in which 
you have risen to the conflict and are de¬ 
termined to master the difficulty. Un¬ 
doubtedly it will have much effect in 
stimulating the element of personal activ¬ 
ity in your horticulture. 
Farming has never been easy. While 
we expect that the physical labor will be 
relatively reduced, we hope that it will 
never be a life of ease in the general ac¬ 
ceptation of that term. Its results must 
depend upon personal industry and appli¬ 
cation and not in any slighting* or short¬ 
cut process. In this time, the farmer has 
at his command the tools of science, the 
weapons of public machinery whereby he 
is able to attack and to conquer his diffi¬ 
culties as they come; or if he cannot con¬ 
quer them all, he at least has the courage 
to make the effort and the confidence that 
in the end he will succeed. We are re¬ 
lieving him of fatalism. 
Every farm is an experiment station 
and the farmer is the director of it. If 
he is somewhat conservative, it must be 
remembered that he handles his own busi¬ 
ness, is responsible for it, and must take 
his own risks. Moreover, he naturally 
thinks in terms of experience and this ex¬ 
perience is mostly on his own place. He 
hesitates to adopt practices which may be 
ever so good at a distance or under other 
conditions. This is really the safety of 
the whole situation. Out of this situation 
we are to develop a very resourceful part 
of our people. As time goes on and as 
civilization becomes more and more com¬ 
plex, we shall be in greater need of the 
individual man standing in his own place 
and managing his enterprise, as a natural 
offset and check to the concentrated and 
impersonal movements. 
Heretofore we have maintained a more 
or less destructive attitude toward the 
earth, denuded it of forests, mined it of 
phosphates, boxed the trees for turpen¬ 
tine, nearly annihilated the bison, robbed 
the soil of its fertility, polluted the 
streams. We now come to the epoch of 
the constructive process. We are not 
only to maintain the surface of the earth 
but to develop it to the end that we may 
regularly produce all the supplies that 
mankind is to need from the land. The 
needful supplies are increasing in quantity 
and variety. We can no longer be merely 
explorers or miners, searching for booty. 
This is really at the bottom of the new 
attitude toward farming and it is making 
the farmer a more responsible man. 
The earth comes from the hand of the 
Creator and in a very real way the farmer 
is the keeper of it. He owes responsi¬ 
bility to the Creator and also to his fel¬ 
lows now and to> come. He is therefore 
engaged in a quasi-public business. I 
should be sorry if it were necessary to 
regulate him by law as we try to regulate 
corporations, but I hope that his sense of 
responsibility will be quickened and that 
society will help him by removing all the 
handicaps that are not naturally a part 
of his business and will make it relatively 
