The morning journal-courier., 1908-08-10
NEW, COMMISSION
 ON COUNTRY LIFE 7 President Appoints Board of Five to Improve and Dignity
 Condition of Farm Family.
SPECIAL MESSAGE COMING
Letter of Appointment Declares There Is No One of More Influence on Nations Life Than Farm
 CTS Wife.

Oyster Bay, N. r.. August 9.--With a view to bringing about better social. sanitary and economic conditions on American farms, President Roosevelt has requested five experts on country life to make an investigation into the whole matter and to report to him with recommendations for improve ments. The report and recommenda- tions with any additional recommenda- tions which the President himself may desire to make. will be incorporated in ] a message which the president will send to Congress probably early next :. year.
 The men President Roosevelt has ' asked to act as an Investigating com- rnitta Sare Prof l.. H. Bailey, of the New xfk College of Agriculture; Hem ry Wallace, of Wallaces Farmer, Des Moiness Iowa, President Kenyon L. Butterfeld of the Massachussetts Ag- ricultural College; Clifford Pinchot of the United States Forest Reserve, and Walter9H. Page, editor of the Worlds Work, New York. In @ letter to Prof. Bailey, asking him to accept the chair manship of the commission, the Presi- dent outlines his desires in the direc- tion of Improvements on the farms !, The letter follows:
 My dear Professor Bailey:
 'No other nation has ever achieved permanent greatness unless this great ness was based on the well being of the great farmer class, the men who live on the soil; or fit is upon their welfare material and moral, that the welfare of the rest of the nation ultimately rests.
 In the United States, disregarding certain sections and taking the nation as a whole. I believe it to be true that the farmers in general are better off to-day than they ever were before. We Americans are making ,great progress in the development of our agricultural resources. But it Is equally true that the social and econ omic institutions of the open country are not keeping pace with the devel- oprnent of,'the nation as a whole. A physician, who is also careful stu dent of farm life in thecsouth, writing to me recently about the enormous percentage of preventable deaths of children due to the .unsanitary condi- tion of certain southern farms, said:
 " Personally, from the health point 'f of view I would prefer to see my own daughter, nine years old, ac work in a aaootton mill, than have her live as tenant on the average southern tenant one-horse farm. This appar- ently extreme statement is based up- on actual life among both classes of people,
 'T doubt if any other nation can bear comparison with our own n the amount of attention given by the gov ~ ernment, both federal and state, to agricultural matters But practically the whole of this effort has hitherto been directed toward increasing the production of crops Our attention has been concentrated almost ex- clusively on getting better farming In the beginning this was unquestion- ably the right thing to do. The far mer must first of all grow good crops in order to support himself and his family. But when this has bsen se- cured, the effort for better farming should cease to stand alone, and should be accompanied by the effort for better business and better living on the farm. It is at least as i'm portant that the farmer should ge the largest possible return in money comfort, and social advantages iron the crops he grows, as that he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country fife. The great rural interests are human in terests, and good crops are of littl value to the farmer unless they ope' the door to good kind of life or the farm
 "The farm grows the raw materia for the food and clothing of all ou citizens, 1t supports directly almos half of them; and nearly half the chil aren of the United States are born an brought up on farps How can the lif