The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1909-02-01

ZION or the wealth. OF our country. Inc
crop of the last year amounted in
money to nearly seven and a half
billion dollars. 1t is more than the
entire trade of all the continent of
Europe. That is the amount of the
agricultural product of the land. This
year unquestionably it is over S.
O00,000,O00.
Now when a mine is exhausted you
have got hole in the ground. There
is no nation that ever relied upon the
precious metals or upon any of other
foundation than the cultivation of the
soil and lived a life worth living
Spain, that once loaded her galleons
with the precious metal from Mexico
and South America-and some OF our
ancestors drove a thriving business
in waylaying them and relieving them
of it-Spain, at one time the richest
of the nations of Europe, relied upon
something besides the cultivation of
her soil, and what Is she today-a
polite people, and almost a nation of
beggars.
Now to come back to the agricul-
tural people: When the Earrings
failed, the Bank of France, having
after the Franco-German war-18 OF
10 years before-paid a thousand mil
lions indemnity, sent her money over
to London to relieve the situation.
France has no great mineral resources
of coal, iron, gold or silver and none
of her colonies has.
What this country needs more than
anything else is an adequate system
of agricultural colleges. The farmers
ought to be taught how to farm. The
farmers of other countries know more
than we do. The land of England has
been titled for a thousand years, but
it is producing more wheat ia the
acre than most of ours is. 1t is the
same in France, Germany, Holland and
Belgium, while the little Japanese till
their few acres with an intelligence
equaled in no other place in the world.
General dissemination of information
pertaining to scientific agriculture
would bring a return beside which all
other sources of national revenue
would seem insinificant.
When the forests are cut down, in
most parts of the country you have
sand ridges, but with you you have
a fertile soil that can be cultivated and
will renew itself in the most kindly
way and take care of-mother earth
will take care of her children for
ever and forever. And pay attention
let me urge you to pay the closest
attention-let me urge you as citi-
zens of the state to encourage your Ag-
ricultural College to the extent that
everything that can shall be done to
enable the man on the land to do to
the best that the land is capable of;
because your city, your churches, your
schools, your commerce, your manufac-
lures, everything goes back more to
the cultivation of the soil than to all
the other conditions in the world, and
it always has been so at all times, and
it always will be SO.
You have the opportunity here and
a great one, but make the most of it.
Teach the young men and the young
women that all their intelligence, all
the knowledge that they may acquire
can be we'll used in the intelligent
cultivation of the land, and the fu-
ture of the state of Washington and
OF the cities within it's borders will be
certain to the end Of time.
Farming calls for intelligence. l do
not feel discouraged about our not
being able to furnish our loaf of bread,
but it has got to be done through
better cultivation of the soil. And
to secure that, let every one of our
Western states, our Eastern states, too,
follow, if they will, but let those who
have their hearts bound up in it, see
to it that their Agricultural Colleges
are the centers of learning-of scien-
tific learning-as to the treatment Of
the good, kindly old mother earth at
whose breasts we have all got to get
our living.