Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1908-10-01

| deteriorating. The averaxe wheat
yield has fallen on some of our best
land from twenty-five bushels or more
to about twelve. Something must he
done to reverse the process. BY con-
slant iteration of well-established
truths, by the appeal to self interest,
since the farmer can double his own
gains for the same labor, by endless
agitation and patient instruction the
work may be accomplished. That 1t
must be done is the most important
fact confronting us as nation today.
The armed fleets of an enemy ap-
preaching our harbors would be no
more alarming than the relentless ad,
vance of day when we shall have
neither food nor the means to pur-
chase it for our own population. The
farmers OF the nation must save 1t in
the future. as they have built its
greatness in the past.
Education the Essential.
My suggestion, then, would be that
each one Of you individually and this
association as whole subordinate
every activity to the educative idea;
that you expend energy and resources
without stint upon spreading every
where a knowledge of the necessity,
the feasibility and the financial profit
of improved farming methods. Work
with your senator's and representa-
tives, and with your state legislatures
If necessary, for the establishment of
model farms in every congressional
district, and if possible in every agri-
cultural county in your respective
states. Nothing would be so effective
as this practical object lesson. Every
slack farmer would see the contrast
between its fields and his own. Every
man with a germ of intelligence
would get more ideas and facts and
insight into methods and the reason
for them in a year by living as
neighbor to a we'll run model farm,
conducted by an expert in agriculture,
than he would in lifetime from read
ing books or listening to stump
speeches. Above everything else, send
your boys and girls, and insist
that the farmers whom you know and
can influence shall send theirs to the
agricultural colleges where modern
systems of tillage are taught. The
opportunity is ample. There are
sixty-three colleges and universities
now receiving aid under acts of con-
gress as a condition of maintaining a
course in agriculture. Keep them, II
you possibly can, in good agri.
cultural schools, and save them
from the temptation of trying to ape
the airs of the university. They are
today the most useful, the most fruit
full educational institutions in the
country, See that the children Of
the farm go where they will not be
taught to despise the soil or long for
a future freed from it's labors; but
will learn the fact, now being fully
understood, that the right kind of
farming offers scope for the keenest
intelligence, occupation for the most
active brain and opportunity and re-
ward for the highest ambition.
After all it is to the next generation
mainly that we must look for the
Transformation of our greatest and
most vital industry, though something
may be done with this. In both
fields, the man who assumes to be the
farmers friend or hold his interests
dear will constitute himself a mis-
sionary of the new dispensation. II
lis an act of patriotic service to the
country. 1t is a contribution to the
welfare of all humanity, and will
strengthen the pillars of a govern
ment that must otherwise waver in
some popular upheavel when the land
shall no longer sustain the
multiplying children that it's bosom
bears. 1t is a high commission that
Is offered to you. BY accepting II
you will confer new dignity, worth
and satisfaction upon the calling in
whose name you are gathered here
and help to garner health and com
fort and happiness and an OppOrtun
lily greater than our own for the com
ling millions; who are no strangers Oh
invaders, but our own children's chill
dren, who will pass judgment upon us
according to what we have made OF
the world in which their lot is to be
least