The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio) 1892-1912, 1910-09-07
Conservation Congress and
Suggestions Made For
Improvement
Problem of Consumption
Overtaking Production
With it's Concomitants
What u Railroad President Knows
About Farming, Crop Rotation and
Other Matters.

st. Paul, Sept This was EARN
Afternoon" at the National Conserva.
tion congress. 1--WE have too many
people In the cities; too few in the
country. said Henry Wallace, author
editor, and member of Roosevelts
country life commission of Des
Moines, Ia, whose address on "The
Real Problem" was one of the fea-
lures of the day
'"The great problem is how to keep
enough skilled men on the farms to
grow food at a price which the people
in the towns and cities can afford to
pay.
"The city man does not now obtain
food at anything like the farm price.
He pays a third more. often twice as
much-three times, sometimes four
and five times as much as the farmer
receives SO long as we had virgin
soil to rob we did not see the newt
able end; but now that consumption
has overtakcn production the city
wakes upand asks whence is to come
its bread, and its meats, at price at
which II is able to purchase
"The city must be told with brutal
frankness that there are too many
consumers of farm products aud too
few producers
"The farmer, too. is beginning To
wake up. and finds that his yield per
acre has been slowly declining for 40
years. The farmer Is a hard fellow
to walen; when Roosevelt and james
Hin talk to him he rouses himself.
rubs his eyes. finally concludes that
1t Is only a scare and then goes to
sleep.
IF the townsman Is to live on his
income he must get farm products
moved from the farm to his kitchen
door cheaper than he has been getting
them. He must do the marketing
himself rather than ordering by tele-
phone, which adds about 16 per cent
to the cost. He must get rid Of the
baby trusts, which fix prices for both
town and city and, vermin-li<e, live
off the farmer and consumer.
"On the farmers side he can add
some acres by irrigation-a slow pro-
cess-and by reclamation. Better cul-
tivation, crop rotation and live stock
farming are necessary.
81 have known cases where farm
girls in Iowa We're compelled to go
into the harvest field and proved bet
ter hands than many men who were
paid 50 per niy. This illustrates the
inefficiency of much of the labor
wich the farmer is compelled to use
far ,I1 Ei
man. II the f;rrm-bOrT boys ana girls
could be kept on the farm. the over
populating power of the farm-brced
of people would in time give us the
labor which the farm needs
1T is a burning shame that, with
the finest body of agricultural land in
the world we excel in wheat growing
only the peasants of Russia and Of
India, that we should grow less than
one-half the wheat per acre grown by
England, France and Germany on
land that has been farmed q thousand
years.
"The most important thing is to
make farm life satisfactory To the
young and prevent them becoming
consumers instead of producers, for a
man lit to be a farmer is worth more
to the city just now on "a farm than
in the city Increased intelligence
means reform in our rural schools,
covering them from poor town
schools, moved out into the country,
to school that imbues the pupils in
their plastic stage with a lovelof farm
life and fits them for It. 1t means
eventually the socialization Of rural
life, as distinct from city life.
"Thls nation cannot maintain its
high standard Of ciyilizati on unless
the drift from the country to the city
can be stopped. The cities use up men
and families as they use up horses.
The country cannot stand much more
skimming of its cream into the city
The trouble with the people of the
United States, both in city and in
country, is that the conditions Of life
have heretofore been too easy The
farmer got rich by mining the soil
and harvesting the unearned product
rather than by farming; the great cit
les, largly by favoritism at the hands