The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1905-09-05
TUE NEW AGRICULTURE AND THE OLD.

,,,rI I'm equipment as this, is In Itself matter
= No small Importance. but the fact that we dedi-
o,+o splendid building to the cause of education
: the least significant feature of our meeting
boro to-day. Fraught with far, far greater mean
inn ! this event. and the agricultural press least
e oII can fail to appreciate it's Importance
Farming is still by all odds the greatest occupa-
t;or of our people, and this dedication means
nothing more nor less than a day in North
Carolina agriculture, and, therefore, new day
for North Carolina a Commonwealth.
10000 Years of Changeless Farming.
For six thousand years We know with even the
strictcst Biblical interpretation men have farm
ed-and for how much longer we know not That
the race shall till the earth is the first and only
condition of life imposed by Nature. We must
grow or gather the fruits of the soil, or death is
the penalty. Back in the dimmest dawn of his
tory therefore stands your Adam keeping his gar
den. Cain cultivating his fields, and Abel feeding
his focks; and through the days of Pharaoh and
Caesar and Charlemagne and Alfred and Napoleon
this oldest and most important occupation of man
has come down to us-presenting in all this time
but remarkably little change in methods. Less
than year ago the Worlds Work printed con-
temporary photograph of blowing in Egypt which
might well have been taken the day that Moses led
the Israelites out into the promised Canaan The
sickle which had its place in the mythology of the
ancient Greeks has not. been so long cast aside
to seem unfamiliar to us. The plow which Gin
cinnatuS left to become the dictator of Rome
would probably not have been an object of much
curiosity to our grandfathers.
The Tragedy of Agriculture.
For, as has been said: ''It is only after waiting
ten thousand years that agriculture is becoming
in our own time really well-organized and scien-
tifc industry" And in this assertion we have but
a tragic truth. To all past generations which
have struggled for time to grow the products of
the earth, and then themselves slept in its BOSOM
farming has been chiefly work of main strength
and awkwardness. Like a man blindfolded. the
soil-tiller has worked side by side with the gods,
not dreaming of their presence. and until now not
knowing how to harness the powers they have
stood ready to place at his disposal Because
Ceres has not been wooed. she has withheld her
gifts. For farming no technical education has
been thought necessary, and the essentials to ag
ncultural success, according to the popular no.
tiOn, have been summed up by our Josh Bill
mgs In the soul-stirring lines:
"lle who by farmin' wood get rich,
Must rake and no and dig an sich
Work hard all day, sleep hard all mite,
Save evry cent, and not get tlte."
Linking Brain and Brawn, Science and Strength,
But we have now come to a new and better day.
Ihe farmer yokes Science with Strength;
BRAIN and Brawn are allied in the work of grow
Ing rIants and animals. This is what it means
that we finding out for the first time the Sc
cretS OF the soil, and so farming in harmony with
Nature; what it means that from 10000 seed that
might grow We select the dozen with the finest
Qualities, and thereby crowd into a century of our
Time the results of an age of natural evolution;
What it means that we are learning how to stay