The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-08-24


 the Condition of the Hired Man and
 His Wife Into Consideration.
 Utica, x. T.. Aug. 23.-There are no two public questions of more vital i'm portance to the future of this country than the problem of conservation and the problem of the betterment of pub lie life. Moreover. these two problems are really interdependent.s for neither of them can be successfully solved save on condition that there is at least a measurable success in the effort to solve the other. In any great country the prime physical asset-the physical asset more valuable than any other is the fertility of the soil. All our industrial and commercial welfare, all our material development of every kind. depends in the last resort upon our preserving and increasing the fer tility of the soil.
 This. of course. means the conserva- tion of the soil as the great natural resource. and equally. of course. it fur thermore implies the development of country life. for there cannot be Ser manent improvement of the soil if the life of those who live on it and make their living out of it is suffered to- starve and languish :. to become stunted and weazened and inferior to the type of life lived elsewhere.
 We are now trying to preserve. not l1;< ts4 the permanent benefit of the whole people. the waters and the forests. and we are doing this primarily as a means of adding to the fertility of the soil. although in each case there is great secondary use both of the wa ter and of the forests for commercial and industrial purposes. In the same way it is essential for the farmers themselves to try to broaden the life of the man who lives in the open coun- try, to make it more attractive, to give 1t every adjunct and aid to develop ment which has been given to the life of the man of the cities.
 Therefore. friends. the conservation and rural life policies are really two sides of the same policy. and down at the bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless in dealing with the present he steadily take thought for the future
 Problem old One.
 In one sense this robIem with which we have to deal is very, very old. Wherever civilizations have hith- erto sprung up they have always tend ed to go through certain stages and then to fall. No nation can develop a real civilization without cities. Up to a certain point the city movement is thoroughly healthy. Yet it is a strange and lamentable fact that always hith- erto after this point has been reached the city has tended to develop at the expense of tue country by draining the country of what is best in it and making an insignificant return for this best.
 In consequence in the past every civ ilization in its later stages has tended really to witness those conditions un- der which the cities prosper and the men decay" There are ugly signs that these tendencies are at work in this nation of ours But very fortunately we see now what never before was seen in any ivilization-an aroused and alert public interest in the prob lem. a recognition of its gravity and a desire to attempt its solution
 The problem does not consist merely m ho of fhn oft growth in itself is good thing and not bad thing for the country. The problem consists in the growth of the city at the expense of the country, and even wherH this is not the case in so great an equality of growth in power and interest as to make the city more attractive than the country and there fore apt to drain the country of the people who ought to live therein.
 The human side of the rural life problem is to make the career of the farmer and the career of the farm la- borer as attractive and as remunera- tive as corresponding careers in the city. Now. I am we'll aware that the farmer must himself take the lead in bringing this about. A century and a quarter ago the wise English farmer. Arthur Young. wrote of the efforts to improve French wool:
 "A cultivator at the head of sheep farm of 5000 or 1000 acres would in a few years do more for their wools than all the academicians and philoso- phers will effect in ten centuries" It is absurd to think that any man who has studied the subject only theoret- ically is fit to direct those who prac- ticalIy work at the matter But. friends. I wish to insist to you here, to you practical men who own and work your farms. that ittis an equally pernscious absurdity for the practical man to refuse to benefit by the work of the student.
 The English farmer have quoted Young-was practical farmer. but he was also a scientific farmer
 Why Farmers Lag.
 One reason why the great business men of today. tho great Industrial lead CTS. have gone ahead while the farme. has tended to sag behind the others ia that they are far more willing and in deed eager to profit by expert and technical knowledge-the knowledge that can only come as a result of the highest education. FFom railways tC factories no great industrial concern