44 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
and governmental departments have been expanding knowledge and 
extending their influence. The fact is that all these agencies re- 
lieve first the good farmers. They aid those who reach out for 
new knowledge and for better things. The man who is strongly 
disadvantaged by natural location or other circumstances is the 
last to avail himself of all these privileges. We have learned that 
it is not sufficient merely to start good movements, but that we 
must have some active means of reaching the last man on the last 
farm. This is by no means a missionary work; it is rather a duty 
that the State owes to its citizens, to provide those persons in diffi- 
cult positions with the best possible means of making their property 
thoroughly serviceable. It becomes in the end, therefore, a personal 
question as to how information and education can be taken to the 
farms in such a way that the farming shall profitably adapt itself 
to its environment. Whatever may be the relative position of New 
York State as an agricultural region, or whatever may be the in- 
creasing effectiveness of our farming as a whole, it is nevertheless 
true that there are a great many farmers who are not making 
headway, and this may be less a fault of their own than a disad- 
vantage of the conditions in which they find themselves. 
It is fairly incumbent on the State to provide effective means 
of increasing the satisfaction and profit of farming in the less for- 
tunate areas as well as in the favorable ones, both as an agency 
of developing citizenship and as a means of increasing the wealth 
of the State. The State cannot delegate this work, nor can it 
escape the responsibility of it. It is primarily an internal question. 
The questions must be attacked just where they exist, and with the 
sole purpose of solving them for the good of the people who meet 
them. The location of the work and the character of it must not 
be influenced by any consideration of personal politics. The time 
has come when government by influence should cease. 
There are three classes of remedies for the ills that overtake the 
tillers of the soil: 
1. Remove all handicaps and disadvantages that are not a natural | 
part of the business, as the inequalities of transportation facilities, 
the effect of combinations in the interest of the few, discriminations 
in legislation, the oppression of systems of marketing. 
2. Give the farmer information to aid him in making a living and 
in enjoying it. 
3. Set some activity at work to arouse, energize and inspire, to 
set out the possibilities of living on the land. 
