Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1912-09-02
ROOSEVELTS CONFESSION OF
FAITH"
Fourth Installment.)
Food Law Should Be Enforced.

NOOu LAW onOulO be ENFORCED.
No people are more vitally inter-
ested than workingmen and working
women in questions affecting the
pubic health. The pure food law
must be strengthened and efficient
ly enforced. In the national govern
ment one department, should be in
structed with all the agencies relat-
ing to the public health, from the en-
forcement of the pure food law to
the administration of quarantine.
Ihls department, through its special
health service, would cooperate in
telligently with the various state and
municipal bodies established for the
same end. There would be no dis
elimination against or for any one
set of therapeutic methods, against
or for any one school of medicine or
system of healing; the aim would be
merely to secure under one admins
trative body efficient sanitary regu-
lation in the interest of the people
as whole.
There is no body of our people
whose interests are more inextricably
interviewer with the interests of all
the people than is the case with the
farmers. The country life commits
sion should be revived with greatly
increased powers; its abandonment
was severe blow to the interests
of our people. The welfare of the
farmer is basic need of this nation.
1t is the men from the farm who in
the past have taken the lead in every
great movement within this nation,
whether in time of war or in time
of peace. 1t is we'll to have our cities
prosper, but it is not well if they
prosper at the expense of the coun-
try. | am glad to say that in many
sections of our country there has
been an extraordinary revival of re-
cent years in intelligent interest in
and work for those who live in the
open country. In this movement the
lead must be taken by the farmers
themselves; but our people as
whole, through their governmental
agencies, should back the farmers.
Everything possible should he done
to better the economic conditions OF
the farmers, and also to increase the
social value of the life of the farmer,
the farmers wife and their children.
The burdens of labor and loneliness
bear heavily on the women in the
country; their welfare should be the
especial concern of all of us. Every
thing possible should be done to
make life in the country profitable
so as to be attractive from the eco
nomlc standpoint and also to give an
outlet among farming people for
those forms of activity which now
tend to make life in the cities es-
pecially desirable for ambitious men
and women. There should be lust
the same chance to live as full, as
well-rounded and as highly useful
lives in the country as in the city.
Farms Ought to Improve.
The government must cooperate
with the farmer to make the farm
more productive. There must be no
sklnning of the soil The farm
should be left to the farmers son in
better, and not worse, condition be-
cause of its cultivation. Moreover,
every invention and improvement.
every discovery and economy, should
be at the service of the farmer in
the work of production; and, in ad-
dition, he should be helped to CO.
operate in business fashion with his
fellows, so that the money paid by
the consumer for the product of the
soil shall to as large a degree as
possible go into the pockets of the
man who raised that product from
the soil. So long as the farmer
leaves cooperative activities with