The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1918-02-27
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|RIS|NESS MEN HERE TODAY

ana the payment or nominal sum,
you soon awaken his interest. This
has not only happened to the individ-
ual and the community. but the en-
tire nation as we'll Our meatless,
and wheatless and sugarless meals
naturally call for an investigation
And when we are faced with the stern
reality that there Is not enough to go
around and that our allotments may
be made even smaller, it is only nat
ural that we begin to look to the
source OF supply.
1T is a good thing. |, for one, am
glad of it. One of the best things
we are going to derive from this
tremendous struggle, is the recogni-
ton from every man and woman,
that agriculture is an industry, that
the farmer Is a real citizen and that
the products of the soil are real COM
modities.
never done before that il the farmer
stops, we all stop, and right now we
recognize that if he fails, we all fall,
and after that there will be nothing
worth fighting for.
Tho Farmers Opportunity.
To-day is the farmers opportunity.
1t has been said that the real oppor-
tunfty comes only once And the big
thing in life for any man Is to be
ready for the opportunity when it
comes.
las never before the American
farmer is feeding the world, and II
peace should be declared tomorrow
his responsibility will be none the
less for he must continue to furnish
food for more and more people, and
feed more and more animals for
months and years to come in larger
share than in any past period OF all
history.
'The day Of reorganization In axri-
culture has como. The day Of bet
ter farm methods, the day Of farm
accounting. the day Of scientific ap-
plication Is upon US and il we do
not accept them and adopt them the
day OF agricultural failure will be
upon us altogether too soon.
Agriculture in itself for the past
fifty years has not been a success, If
we apply the law OF averages. A
few men have made money in actual
farming. Many men have made
money in land speculation. We es-
tablished few years ago a depart
ment or bureau known as the farm
management bureau. Every state
organized one, the object of which
was, primarily, to take an inventory
OF farm methods. The information
revealed was most startling. Hero
is an example of 1t taken from reports
Of surveys made in your own state,
the leading agricultural state of the
union.
An Example In iowa.
I'm one township seventy farms
were surveyed. The average value
was $37,1S5. The average labor in
come from those seventy farms was
$331OO. Cost OF labor, living ex-
penses, 3 per cent on the investment
were deducted, and seventy farmers
had a labor income of s331.00 for an
entire years labor; less than $50 a
month. On twenty-five farms, the
labor income was only $s1.00 On
fifteen of those farms where only
thirty-four OF the products Of the
farm were sold In the form Of live
stock, the labor income was a minus
$500. On eighteen farms where
they sold 70 per cent or practically
four-fifths OF the products of the
farm in the form of live stock, the
labor income was 100000.
There were only thirteen farms
out of the seventy that had labor
income of $1,000 or better. Fifty
nine OF them were below the $500
year mark.
We Arc Wasteful.
These figures do not show the
big part of the failure however. The
biggest loss was in the lost fertility
Our agriculture failure lies in the
fact that we have been the most ex-
travagant wasteful class of farmers
in the world. We skim country and
move on. We rob a farm of Its Pro
ducing power and change farms; we
have not yet, after more than hun
dred years, gotten down to the fund
amental principle of agriculture which
is that, land must feed animals and
animals must feed the lands We
have become a nation Of soil robbers.