Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1914-01-06
Agriculture in 1913

The following, from the pen of l.. R. Johnson of
Cape Girardeau, Mo-, to the Breeders Gazette, is
timely and interesting:
Mot inappropriately might the year just past be
distinguished as an historical date in the history OF
agriculture. To those eyes which preserve a true
perspective in looking far abroad over a worlds &C.
tivities, there are to be discerned indications which
herald the arrival Of a new epoch, a great nation
wide awakening to the art of the fields, one which
the historian might we'll chronicle as the %reddening
dawn of the modern renaissance of the eartAs hus-
bandry. Not a land under the sun is there which
has not felt the qaickening power of a new impulse
such as the spring sun brings to the dormant plant.
The faraway peoples of the Orient. the vast unde.
veloped reaches of Africa, the civilization of Europe,
the Spanish states of South America and the races
from Panama to Alaska, all unite to lift their heads
towards the new sun. Every realm of earth is ad-
jrsting anew its conception Of agriculture and Gil a
scope that far transcends the old one.
In the British Isles the spokesman of the cabinet
is laundering a proclamation of soil emancipation as
great as Lincoln's. The emperors, kings, presidents
and ministers of government throughout the world
are turning even from Mars to recognize and salute
deferentially the rosycheeked Ceres. For signs and
portents had appeared to them. Like some demon
Of the occult world a ~shadowy form had risen huge
before their eyes and shaken a warning finger. In
their varied ambitions they had forgotten that mans
feet are irrevocably fixed to the soil. and that how.
ever the immortal spirit may soar, a mortal body
stands ready to remind him that ne is a creature Of
the earth and of the products thereof.
In this new light we may see the man OF the
fields and the herds coming forward to claim his long
sequestered estate, and the whole world uncover in
his presence as to some s%ceptered %potentate. Daily
in all climes and among all races is he being crowned
with new honors and dignities. The stolid 'man with
the hoe" who served the poet as a symbol of all that
was dull and oppressed in man, has been TRANSPORTED
into one of the proud lords of the earth.
True, he still bears on his back "the burden of
the world" but no longer is it carried on bowed and
aching shoulders. Erect he stands and looks about
him with eyes conscious of strength. No longer is
his face vacant with the emptiness of ages" but
his features shine brightly with the light of a new
intelligence. No longer do his hands lean spiritlessly
on a servile hoe, but hold aloft the lamp of science.
whose calm, farreaching rays give him vision to
see not only the soil but the myriad life that swarms
within it; not only the leaf but the subtle functions
but the potential strength of its fertilizing atoms.
Truly he is a husbandman and his spouse is none
other than great Nature herself.
Above the horizon rises the fullorbed sun of the
renaissance of agriculture, stamping the twentieth
century with an immortal distinction. Its beams fall
mankind. Who shall write the Had of the soil man
of past centuries? Who shall compose the anthem
that sings Of his apotheosis? =