The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-07

rigid inspection of all meats that enter into interstate commerce. Thirty eight million carcasses were inspected during the last fiscal year. Our stock growers sell forty-1ve million dollars worth of live stock annually and these animals must be kept healthy or else our people will lose their trade. Our export of plant products to foreign countries amounts to over six hundred million dollars a year, and there is no branch of its work to which the department of agriculture devotes more care. Thus the department has been successfully introducing mac aroni wheat from the headwaters of the Volga, which grows successfully In ten inches of rainfall, and by this means wheat growing has been successfully ex- tended westward into the sem-arid region. Two million bushels of this wheat were grown last year; and being suited to dry conditions it can be used for forage as well as for food for man.
 Helping Fruit Men.
 The department of agriculture has been helping our fruit men to establish mar kets abroad by studying methods of fruit preservation through refrigeration and through methods of handling and packing. On the gulf coast of Louisiana and Texas, thanks to the department of agriculture, a rice suitable to the re- zion was imported from the Orient and the rice crop is now practically equal to our needs in this country, whereas few years ago 1t supplied but one fourth of them. The most important of our farm products is the grass crop; and to show what has been done with grasses, l need only allude to the striking change made in the entire west by the extended use of alfalfa.
 Moreover, the department has taken the lead in the effort to prevent the defor- estation of the country. Where there are forests we seek to preserve them, and on the once treeless plains and the prairies we are doing our best to foster the habit of tree planting among our people. In my own lifetime I have seen wonderful changes brought about by this tree plant ing here in your own state and in the states Immediately around 1t.
 Good Roase.
 There are a number of very important questions, such as that of good roads, with which the states alone can deal, and where all that the national govern ment can do Is to cooperate with them. The same is true of the education of the American farmer. number of the states have themselves started to help In this work and the department of agri- culture does an immense amount which Is in the proper sense of the word educa- tional, and educational in the most prac- tical way.
 It is, therefore, clearly true that a great | advance has been made in the direction of finding ways by which the government can help the farmer to help himself the only kind of help which a sef-respect- ing man will accept, or, may add which will in the end do him any good Much has been done in these ways, and farm life and farm processes continually change for the better. The farmer himself still retains, because of his surroundings and the nature of his work, to q pre-eminent l degree, the qualities which we like to | think of as distinctly American in consid- | ering our early history. The man who tills his own farm, whether ou the prairie or in the woodlawn, the man who grows what we eat and the raw material which Is worked up into what we wear still exists | more nearly under the conditions which | obtained when the "embattled farmers" of '76 made this country a nation than Is true of any other of our people.
 Wage-Workers in Cities.
 But the wage-workers in our cities, like | the capitalists in our cities, face totally l changed conditions The development of machinery and the extraordinary change in business conditions have rendered the | employment of capital and of persons in | large aggregations not merely profitable but often necessary for success, and have l specialized the labor of the wage-worker l at the same time that they have brought | great aggrega tions of wage-worxers to- | gether. More and more in our great industrial centers men have come to realize that they can not live as inde- pendently of one another as in the old days was the case everywhere and as is now the case in the country districts. Of course Fundamentally each man will yet find that the chief factor in determining his success or failure in life is the sum of his own individual qualities. He can not afford to lose his individual initiative. his individual will and power; but he can best use that power if for certain objects he untes with his fel- lows
 As to Organization.
 Much can be done by organization, com blnation, union among the wage-workers; finally something can be done by the direct action of the state. It Is not pos sible empirically to declare when the n- reference of the state should be deemed legitimate and when llegitimate
 The line of demarcation between un-' healthy over-interference and unhealthy lack of regulation is not always well de- fined. and shifts with the change in our industrial needs. Most certainly we should never invoke the interference of the state or nation unless 1t Is absolutely necessary; put IL IS equally true that when confident of its necessity we should not on academic grounds refuse it. Wise factory laws. laws to forbid the employ ment of child labor and to safeguard the employees against the effects of culpabe negligence by the employer. are neces- sary not merely in the interest of the wage-worker, but in the interest of the honest and humane employer, who should not be penalized for his honesty and hu- mapftV by being pYDOSad fo ppobaot,ad competition with an interruptions rival It is far more difficult to deal with the greed that works through cunning than with the greed that works through yiol- ence But the effort to deal with it must | be steadily made.
 | Very much of our effort In reference to labor matters should be by every device