The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1909-04-09

NOW, since agricultural education in
Minnesota has been on a sound basis,
and there is no sense in excusing the
slowness, the slackness of our devel-
opment as whole There is no de-
Tense, no excuse.
OF course this is not a popular vein
in which to write. 1t may rouse the
ire of some of our readers; we truly
: hope it will make them so "boilng
mad" that they will begin at once to
prove that it does not apply to their
F., farms or their methods, however it
may fit their neighbors. But we are
so disguised with the taffy of so-called
friends of the farmer" who spend
/ their time telling the farmer how they
admire him and envy him in his indie
pendent life, "close to nature" that
we feel it incumbent upon us, right
now, to ask our Minnesota farmers
to revise this intolerable tariff of
$6,000,000 a year on Minnesota self
sufficency, and let ms have free trade
of agricultural intelligence between
ourselves and the rest of the country.
Let us raise wheat as well as Wis
consn does-for Wisconsin beats us
forty per cent though it is not a
ing as we'll as Iowa, Nebraska and the
DakOtas do, for we boast of our pro-
tein loaded grasses and our pure wa
ter and salubrious climate.
We are talking amongst ourselves
now and there is no call for self
fiattery. The situation is sad enough
to make a COW bawl.
The blame does not lie with the
kind of people we have in this state.
Our Scandinavians and our Germans
come from countries far in advance of
the United States in dairy knowledge
and efficiency and they constitute
with their descendants), two-thirds or
more of our population. If the disease
were horticultural we might designate
it as "dry rot;" as it comes closer
to physiological we may describe it as
a condition of brain hide bound
No, it is not nationality, it is the
curse of Adam that rests upon the
state. Adam has but too recently
emerged from his Paradise of Ease, in
his grain fields, where, with virgin
soil and unlimited cheap land he need
ed not to earn his bread and milk
by the sweat of his brow, but could
simply Toll around in the shade and
eat wild fruit, while his grain ripened
He has soft muscles yet, he has not
recovered yet from the solar plexus
blow that landed him in the BRAN
bles of competition and hustle.
Wake up, Father Adam, the world
goes with power now and your negih-
-bors are away down the road.
We hear much of the need of adver-
Using the state to induce immigration.
That is all right; the states soil and
water and climate and markets can
not be surpassed in America and may
well be advertised, but what we need
IS not more farmers-it is more farm
ing. What we need is agricultural
horse sense, an dit is a mighty poor
advertisement of Minnesota to let shcn
statistics of our production continue,
as are being published by the unbiased
and indisputed authority of the gov
eminent. We need agricultural educa-
ton with the application of practical
knowledge to practical farming, not on
few hundred farms, but on hundreds
of thousands of farms in Minnesota.
Profits will then increase ten fold. and
the best advertisement of the states
agriculture is the prosperity of its
agriculturists.