The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1908-08-13
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
FOR FARM REFORMS
Would Improve Conditions Of Country
Life.
. COMMISSION is APPOINTED.
Prof. L. F. Bailey. Of New York,
Heads Body of Men Who Will Give
Chief Executive Advice 20 BE EN-
bodied in a Message to Congress
Next December.

Oyster Bay, n. Y. (SpeciaO -
With a view to bringing about better
social, sanitary and economic con-
ditions on American farms President
Roosevelt has requested four experts
on country life to make an investi-
CATION into the whole matter and to
report to him with recommendations
for improvements. The report and
recommendations with any addition
al recommendation which the Presi-
dent himself may desire to make, VIII
be incorporated in message which
the President will send to Congress
probably early next year.
The men President Roosevelt has
asked to act as an investigating COM
mittee are:
prof. L. II. Bailey, of the New
York College of Agriculture.
Henry Wallace, of Wallace's Farm
er, Des Moines, la.
President Kenyon l.. Butterheid,
of the United States Forest Reserve.
Walter II. Page, editor of the
Worlds Work, New York
Clifford Pinchot, United States
Forest Service.
In letter to Professor Bailey ask
ing him to accept the chairmanship
of the commission the President out
lines his desires in the direction Of
improvements on the farms. The let
ter follows:
My Dear Professor Bailey:
No nation has ever achieved per-
manent greatness unless this great
ness was based on the wellbeing OF
the great farmer class, the men who
| live on the soil; for 1t is upon their
welfare, material and moral that the
welfare of the rest of the nation ul'
timately rests In the United States,
/ disregarding certain sections and TAX
ing the nation as a whole, | believe
It to be true that the farmers In gen
eral are better off today than they
ever were before. We Americans are
making great progress in the devel-
opment OF our agricultural resources.
But it is equally true that the So
| cial and economic institutions of the
/ open country are not keeping pace
with the development of the nation
| as a whole.
Conditions In South.
The farmer is, as a rule, better
off than his forebears; but his in
| crease in wellbeing has not kept pace
with that of the country as whole.
While the condition of the farmer
! in some of our best farming regions
leaves little to be desired, we are far
from having reached as high level
as that in all parts of the country.
In portions of the South, for example,
where the Department of Agriculture,
through the Farmers Cooperative
Demonstrating work of Dr.. Knapp,
is directly instructing more than 30,-
600 farmers in better methods of
farming, there is nevertheless much
unnecessary suffering and needless
loss OF efficiency on the farm. A
physician, who is also a careful stu
dent of farm life in the South, writing
to me recently about the enormous
percentage of preventable deaths OF
children due to the unsanitary con
ditions OF certain Southern farms
said:
Choose Cotton Mill.
Personally, from the health point
of view, | would prefer to see my
daughter, nine years old, at work in
a cotton mill than have her live as
tenant on the average Southern ten
ant one-horse farm"
This apparently extreme statemen
is based upon actual life among bott
classes of people.
| doubt If any other nation car
bear comparison with our own in The
amount OF attention given by thC
government, both federal and state
to agricultural matters But prac
tically the whole of this effort hal
| hitherto been directed toward in
creasing the production of crops
Our attention has been concentrated
almost exclusively on getting bette
farming. In the beginning this wa
unquestionably the right thing Il
do. The farmer must first of al
grow good crops in order TO supper
himself and his family.
But when this has been secures
the effort for better farming shouli
cease to stand alone and should b.
accompanied by the effort for bette
business and better living on tn
farm. II is at least as important tina
the farmer should get the largest pos
sible return in money comfort an
social advantages from the crops h
grows, as that he should get tn
largest possible return in crops froI
the land he farms Agriculture
not the whole of country life. Th
great rural interests are human in
terests, and good crops are of littl
value to the farmer unless they ope
the door to a good kind of life o
the farm.
This problem of country life is 1
= the truegt sense q national problem
In an address delivered at the sem
centennial OF the founding OF agr
! cultural colleges in the United State
year ago last May | said
Farmers Welfare.
There Is but one person who's
welfare is as vital TO the welfare {
the whole country as Is that of th
wage-worker who does manual iabo
Paris Strike A Fizzle.