The Savannah morning news., 1904-06-06
The Advance of Agriculture.

Those of us who have been long en-
gagged in the effort to improve our
| agriculture sometimes feel discouraged
and are apt to think that little pro-
gress has been made, says the Pracu-
cal Farmer. But if one will but look
back over the past thirty years he VIII
see that on the whole there has oeen
wonderful advance. True, the ad-
vance from year to year seems SLOW
but when we take In whole genera
ton we find that agriculture mas
made great development in this
country.
In no particular has it advanced
more than in the use of labor saving
machinery. The cradle and the scythe
of our boyhood have given place 10
the harvester and binder and the
moving machine. The tedder has tax
en- the place of hand forks and the
horse rake of the hand rake. The
treading floor has been supplanted by
the threshing machine, and even the
thresher has been developed until it
takes care of it's own straw and saves
the handling, with hand forks. The
hay is unloaded and stored by horse
power with sings or forks. The Ia
Dor of cutting corn down by hand is
rapidly being done away with by the
corn harvester and instead OF the old
time huskings, with their crowd and
merry making, we now have the hus-
ker and shredder which cleans out the
corn and makes hay of the slower.
Then too, the silo has come and has
gone through a process of evolution
towards a perfecting of the process,
and the feeding capacity Of the land
has been greatly increased thereby.
With improved ideas in the cultiva-
ton of the soil have come improved
implements for doing the work. The
laborious walking after the pillow and
cultivator has been changed to riding
at work and a more rapid doing of
the work, so that one man can culti-
vate more land than two could with
the implements of a generation ago.
The culture of the soil has come to be
recognized as a science that can be
thoroughly and Systematically taught,
and it is no longer thought that the
tiller of the soil needs no education,
but farming has come to be recog-
nized as a professions that requires the
broadcast kind of an education, en-
bracing, as it does, a knowledge of so
many kindred sciences. In short, ag-
ricuture has been elevated into a pro-
fession instead of handicraft, a
science instead of an art, and it is
fast being realized that the successful
farmer must be a book farmer and a
student, as we'll as a practical work.
err We we'll remember when in the
Central West the men who opened
up the timber lands and broke the
prairies were so satisfied with the
great fertility of the soil that they
laughed at the idea that their soil
would ever need manure, and one of
their chief cares was to get rid of the
IL LOT in he or
way. They started in at once TO spend
their deposit in their bank, the soil,
and now have found that there was
really a limit to that deposit, and that
scientific farming must now take the
place of the former waste of the vir-
gin soil.
In no respect has there been great
er advance than in agricultural edu-
cation. The colleges founded on the
land grants blundered in the hands
of incompetent men for years. But
they, too, have had their evolutions,
and, with the experiment stations
since established in connection with
them, have become the greatest power
in the development of agriculture to-
day. AS an outgrowth from the edu-
cational efforts in the colleges the gen
GRAFTON has seen the inception and
growth of the farmers institutes,
the university extension 10 agriculture,
which has wrought almost as much
for the farmers as the colleges them
selves. What the end of another gen.
Grafton will show in American agri-
culture it is hard to predict. But OF
one thing we feel sure, and this is
that in another thirty years the man
who tries to farm without a special
educational training will be considered
as much a quack as the man who ta-
day would start as a doctor without
| the diploma of a medical college.