The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1911-03-08


any other-is the fertility of the
soil. All our industrial and COM
mercial welfare, all our mater.a al
development of every kind, depends
in the last resort upon our preserv-
ing and increasing the fertility Of
the soil. This, of course, means the
conservation of the soil as a great
natural resource; and, equally, Of
course, it Furthermore implies the
development of country life, YoY
there cannot be a permanent i'm
provement of the soil if the life of
those who live on it, and make their
living out Of it, is suffered to starve
and anguish, to become stuntnn and
weakened and inferior to the type Of
life elsewhere.
City Drains Country.
In one sense this problem with
which we have to deal is very, very
old. Wherever civilizations have
hitherto sprung up they have al
ways tended to go through certain
stages and then to fail. No nation
can develop a real civilization with
out cities. Up to a certain point the
yet it is a strange and lamentable
fact that always hitherto after this
point has been reached the city has
tended to develop at the expense of
the country by draining the country
of what is best in it, and making an
insignificant return for this best. In
in the past, every civil
ization in its later stages has tended
really to witness those conditions
under which "the cities prosper and
the men decay" There are ugly
signs that these tendencies are ut
work in this nation of ours. But
very fortunately we see now what
never before was seen in any civil
ization-an aroused ad alert public
in the problem and a recog-
milton of it's gravity and a desire to
attempt it's solution.
The problem does not consis.
merely in the growth of the city.
Such a 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 where
this is not the case, in so great an
equality of growth in power and in
est as to make the city more attrac-
tive than the country, and therefore
apt to drain the country of the peo-
pie who ought to live therein.
Need of Instruction.
The human side of the rural life
problem is to make the career of the
farmer and the career of the fam
as attractive and as remun-
erative as corresponding careers in
the city. 1t is absurd to think tina.
any man who has studied the sub
iect only theoretically is fit to direct
those who practically work at the
matter. But, friends, | wish to insist
to you hereto you practical men,
who own and work your farms, it is
a pernicious absurdity for the prac-
t cal man to refuse to benefit by the
work of the student. One reason
why the great business men of today
the great industrial leaders-have
gone ahead, while the farmer has
tended to sag behind the Others is
that they are far more willing, ano
indeed eager, to profit by expert and
technical knowledge-the knowledge
that can only come as result OF
the highest education. From rail-
ways to factories no great Industrial
concern can nowadays be carried on
save by the aid of swarm OF men
who receive q high technical educa-
ton in chemistry, in engineering, in
in one or more of scores
of special subjects. The big business
y;
ask college-trained experts to tell
him how to run his business; but ne
does ask numbers of them to give
him expert advice and aid on some
one point indispensable to his busi-
ness. He finds this man usually is
some graduate of a technical school
or college in which he has been
trained for his life work.
Educate Towards Farm.
In just the same way farmers
should benefit by the advice of the
technical men who have been trained
in phases of the very work the farm
err does. 1 am not now speaking of
the man who has had an ordinary
general training, whether in school
or college. While there should un-
doubtedly be such a training as
foundation (the extent differing ac-
cording to the kind of work each
boy intends to do as MANI, IL is,
nevertheless, true that our educa-
t onal system should more and more
be turned in the direction OF educat-
ing men toward, and not away FROM
the farm and the shop. During the
last half century we have begun
to develop a system of agricultural
education at once practical and sci
entific, and we must go on develop
ing it, But, after developing it, it
must be used The rich man who
spends fortune upon fancy farm
with entire indifference to cost, does
not do much good to farming; but
on the other hand, just as little S
done by the working farmer who
stolidly refuses to profit by the
knowledge of the day, who treats
any effort Improvement as absurd
on its face, refuses to countenance
what he regards as new-fangled
ideas and contrivances and jeers at
all book learning"
l wish l could take representatives
of this type of farmer down to Long
Island where I live, to have them see
what has been done, not as phi.an
thropy, but as a plain business prop
ositon, by men connected with the
Long Island railroad, who believe 4
pays to encourage the developme nj
of farms along the line of that rail-
way They have put practical men
in charge of experimental farms, Gull
tivating them intensvely. and using