LJJ 138^ 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 WILLIAM C. BROWN 
 
 President 
 New York Central Lines 
 
 At Founder's Day Exercises of the 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 Ithaca, N. Y., January ii, igio 
 
 Mr. President^ Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I esteem it an exceedingly great privilege, as \vell as 
 a distinguished honor, to participate in these exercises 
 in honor of the founder of this great institution of learn- 
 ing. 
 
 The name and fame of Ezra Cornell appeal to me 
 with peculiar significance, because he was one of the 
 creators of, and was long identified with, the great busi- 
 ness of telegraphy ; and his name was a very familiar 
 one to me in the early seventies, when I was a young 
 telegrapher. 
 
 It is usual upon occasions of this character which 
 mark the milestones in the life of an institution, a com- 
 munity or an individual, to deal largely in things of 
 the past, to indulge in remarks of retrospective charac- 
 ter ; but I am going to ask you to consider for a few 
 moments a subject which I regard as of paramount pres- 
 ent interest, and which is destined to increase in import- 
 ance with startling rapidity. 
 
 Almost unconsciously the present generation and the 
 one that preceded it have witnessed and are now wit- 
 nessing the culmination and end of one of the greatest 
 
epochs of all history; the tremendous, far-reaching sig- 
 nificance of which, when viewed in large perspective, is 
 but faintly comprehended even by the most profound, 
 clear-visioned students of political economy. 
 
 Two thousand years before the birth of Christ, in 
 the early dawn of civilization, history tells of a tribe 
 ■of yellow men who left the Valley of the Tigris or the 
 Euphrates, and emigrated to the East. I think this is 
 the only recorded case of emigration in that direction, 
 and historians tells us that in all probability this tribe 
 of yellow men located on the western shore of the Pacific 
 Ocean and was the nucleus of the present great Chinese 
 nation, with its four hundred million souls. 
 
 A thousand years later Grecian adventurers crossed 
 the Aegean Sea and established the first colonies upon 
 its western shores. This was the beginning of that great 
 westward drift of population that has never ceased ; 
 -and through all the centuries the ever-receding west, 
 absorbing and assimilating the millions of the overflow 
 ■of older civilizations, has continually called for more. 
 
 For more than three hundred years the nations of the 
 Old World have found on this new continent an indis- 
 pensable safety valve. Our broad, unoccupied prairies 
 "have furnished to the discontented, the dispossessed and 
 unfortunate of every nation an opportunity to begin life 
 anew under conditions happier than could be found in 
 any other land. 
 
 When Cornell was founded in 1865, almost the entire 
 trans-Mississippi empire was a wilderness. 
 
 That year marked the close of the Civil War, and 
 the States of Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska could have 
 furnished a quarter section of fertile gove^^nment land 
 to every veteran mustered out of the military service of 
 
 2 
 tn £x«tiauga. 
 
 UcAntetvi- A. IU|, '-C'C^-T'M^rKvvO:! 
 
the nation. Great states and territories, with their \yeahh 
 of forest and prairies, lay waiting to be peopled. 
 
 To-day, the last county of the last state and territory 
 where cultivation is possible has been settled. That great 
 wave of population beginning with the Grecian colonies, 
 which crossed the Aegean and the Adriatic seas a thou- 
 sand vears before the birth of Christ, has broken on the 
 eastern shore of the Pacific. 
 
 The tribe of yellow men that journeyed east, multi- 
 plied by millions, occupies the western shore of that 
 mightv ocean — the great westward moving procession of 
 the centuries has encircled the globe. Soon a great 
 human undertow must set back toward the east, and the 
 westward tide which cannot be materially checked must 
 settle in turbulent eddies about our great centers of popu- 
 lation. 
 
 In a letter written by Lord Macauley to Mr. H. S. 
 Randall, a citizen of this country, under date of May 23, 
 1857, he said. 
 
 "As long as you have a boundless extent of fer- 
 tile, unoccupied land, your laboring population will 
 be far more at ease than the laboring population of 
 the Old World. But the time will come when New 
 England will be as thickly peopled as Old England. 
 You will have your Manchesters. and your Birming- 
 hams, and in these INIanchesters and Birminghams 
 hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be 
 sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will 
 be fairly brought to the test." 
 Two important features of this remarkable prophesy 
 of a half century ago have been fulfilled. The boundless 
 extent of fertile, unoccupied land is gone. We have our 
 Manchesters and our Birmingfhams bv the score, and 
 
in times of great depression such as will certainly come, 
 our unemployed will be numbered not by the hundreds of 
 thousands but by the million. 
 
 Is it not time to "take thought of the morrow," and 
 to make such preparation as may be possible against the 
 day of stress and test predicted by Macauley? 
 
 In this direction I desire to briefly suggest two plans 
 having a common purpose, and perhaps equal in impor- 
 tance. 
 
 First : The broadening of our methods of education 
 in all our schools and colleges. I would give no less 
 attention to graduating lawyers and physicians, but 
 would give a great deal more to turning out of our public 
 schools young men with a good, common-school educa- 
 tion plus a year's practical training at some useful trade. 
 
 I would have a first-class manual training school at- 
 tached to every high school and to every college and 
 university, where young men could be turned out good, 
 practical journeymen blacksmiths, boilermakers, car- 
 penters, cabinet workers, plumbers, or skilled workmen 
 at some other useful trade. I would increase the capacity 
 of these schools to accommodate every child in the com- 
 munity, and then I would make attendance compulsory. 
 
 I have discussed this question with officials of public 
 school boards and with the presidents of some of our 
 colleges and, in a majority of cases, have been met with 
 the suggestion that a course of this kind would be likely 
 to antagonize organized labor. I am glad to-day that 
 the doubt as to the attitude of organized labor upon this 
 important subject has been definitely set at rest. Recently 
 at the annual convention of the American Federation of 
 Labor, a special committee on industrial education ap- 
 pointed one year ago to make a study of this subject. 
 
submitted its report, from which the following is an 
 extract : 
 
 "Organized labor favors that plan of industrial 
 training which will give our boys and girls such 
 training as will help them to advance after they are 
 in industry. We believe that as much attention 
 should be given to the proper education of those 
 who work at our industry as is now given to those 
 who prepare to enter professional and managerial 
 careers." 
 The report was submitted by a committee of which 
 John jMitchell was chairman, and like the man, it is pro- 
 gressive, hopeful and helpful. 
 
 If we could adopt Germany's system of technical 
 training, her research and thoroughness, and combine 
 them with our inventions, the combination would domi- 
 nate the world. Without these fundamental qualities, it 
 is only a question of time when this country must sur- 
 render its place as a leader among the great manufactur- 
 ing nations of the world. 
 
 A German commission which recently visited this 
 country recognized the fact that great as the United 
 States is, we will not continue to be a dangerous com- 
 petitor of Germany in our manufacturing industries 
 after we have a little further depleted our abundant 
 supply of raw material. 
 
 This confident belief is based upon the notorious lack 
 of technical education in this country as compared with 
 that of Germany, where almost every workman is a 
 master of his trade. 
 
 The report of the commission asserts that : 
 
 "American colleges turn out a host of profes- 
 sional men, but few skilled artisans and craftsmen. 
 
The meagerness of technical education, the trivial 
 contingent of chemists, dyers, weavers and elec- 
 tricians seems a shortsighted policy for a country 
 of 80,000,000 people." 
 
 Successful demur to this indictment is impossible. It 
 is a true bill. 
 
 I would make our agricultural colleges and the agri- 
 cultural departments of all colleges in fact what they are 
 in name b}^ limiting admission to young men who want 
 to study and school themselves in scientific agriculture 
 for the purpose of becoming first-class farmers, thor- 
 oughly equipped for and vitally interested in that most 
 honorable profession 
 
 I would postpone the day of test foreshadowed by 
 Lord Macauley by a system of thorough education in 
 agricultural methods that would result in doubling our 
 rural population, and more than doubling the product 
 of the nation's farms. 
 
 The United States as a whole has as fertile soil and 
 as favorable climate as any country in the world. Given 
 the same intelligent methods of seed selection, fertiliza- 
 tion and cultivation, our lands will produce as large crops 
 as those of any other nation. A simple comparison of 
 the average annual yield per acre of the principal cereals 
 in this country with those of the older nations is the 
 severest possible criticism of our methods, or our want 
 of method. During the last ten years our farms have 
 produced an average annual yield of wheat of less than 
 14 bushels per acre. England produces., more than 32, 
 Germany about 28, the Netherlands more than 34, and 
 France approximately 20. 
 
 Of oats, the United States produces an average annual 
 yield of 23.7 bushels per acre, England 42, Germany 46, 
 and the Netherlands 53 bushels. 
 
 6 
 
Potatoes, like wheat, corn and bread, are a food staple 
 of the poor man. Our average yield is 85 bushels per 
 acre, while Germany, Belgium and Great Britain pro- 
 duce 250 bushels. 
 
 Germany, with an arable area no greater than some 
 of our larger states, produces approximately two billion 
 bushels of potatoes annually, while the aggregate crop 
 of the United States averages barely two hundred and 
 seventy-five million bushels per annum ; and in the year 
 ended June 30, 1909, we imported 8,400,000 bushels. 
 
 For half a century we have very justly regarded our 
 country as the granary of the world, and our annual ex- 
 ports of food stufifs have formed a basis for a large bal- 
 ance of trade in our favor. Our exports of this character 
 show a steady and alarmingly rapid decline. In the past, 
 increase in population, increase in consumption, has been 
 met by multiplied acres. This is no longer possible, or 
 at least only to a very limited and constantly diminish- 
 ing extent. Increased consumption in the future must 
 be provided for, not by an increase in acres but by an 
 increase in the yield per acre. 
 
 Each year immigration and natural increase add ap- 
 proximately two million hungry mouths to be fed, and it 
 calls for an increase of approximately 75,000,000 bushels 
 of food producing cereal per annum to supply this de- 
 mand. 
 
 In 1898 the total acreage of corn, wheat, oats, barley 
 and rye in the United States was a little less than one 
 hundred and fifty-two million acres, the yield 22.5 bushels 
 per acre, the aggregate product three billion, four hun- 
 dred and twelve million bushels, of which there was ex- 
 ported almost five hundred and ninety-nine million 
 bushels. 
 
In 1908 the acreage had increased to more than one 
 hundred and ninety million acres ; the yield was 22.8 
 bushels per acre; the aggregate yield four billion, three 
 hundred and thirty-nine million bushels ; but our exports 
 had fallen to one hundred and sixty-five million bushels,, 
 a decrease of 72 per cent. 
 
 This tremendous falling off in exports of grain and 
 its products suggests the possibility that the grain may 
 have been fed to stock and exported in the shape of beef 
 and pork, but the falling off in the exports of these com- 
 modities for the period named is fully as startling as in 
 grain. 
 
 I have noted with regret expressions of satisfaction 
 and self-congratulation upon the part of the press .over 
 the fact that the aggregate value of farm products has 
 increased from four billion, four hundred and seventeen 
 million dollars in 1898 to eight billion, seven hundred and 
 sixty million dollars in 1909, unmindful of the disturbing 
 fact that this increase in value is the result almost entirely 
 of increased acreage and a startling increase in price per 
 bushel, and not the result of an increased yield per acre. 
 
 This failure to increase the production of the nation's 
 farms by increasing the number of bushels per acre is 
 steadily and rapidly increasing the cost of living; and 
 manufacturers, merchants and employers of labor of 
 every class are scanning the future with anxious eyes, 
 for the end does not seem to be in sight. 
 
 The only possible solution, the only possible salva- 
 tion for the country, is an immediate and most thorough 
 awakening of our people to an appreciation of the over- 
 shadowing importance of this condition, followed by a 
 systematic, persevering campaign of education. The 
 Hon. A. S. Draper, State Commissioner of Education, in 
 
an address on "Agriculture and Its Educational Needs," 
 summed the whole matter up tersely and comprehensively 
 in the following conclusion : 
 
 "We should enter upon a great system of agri- 
 cultural extension. The schools, from highest to 
 lowest, should act in accord, not only in training 
 students and in scientific research, but in carrying 
 knowledge to the very doors of the farmers. Evan- 
 gelistic work in agriculture should go everywhere. 
 Seed specials should be run over the railroads. The 
 blood of the best farm animals should be distributed 
 throughout the state. Object lessons of special in- 
 terest to both men and women should be carried in 
 all directions. The applications should be especially 
 adapted to every section, and the fullest attention 
 should be given to the less favored rather than to the 
 more favored counties of the state." 
 New York State should be a leader in this work, first 
 because no state in the Union needs it so badly; second, 
 because the Empire State should be a leader in this great 
 work as she is in almost every other great national move- 
 ment. 
 
 Ninety years ago the richness and fertility of the soil 
 of New York State and the production of her farms was 
 the wonder and admiration of European travelers. In 
 i860 this state was among the first of the great agri- 
 cultural states of the Union. To-day the State of Maine, 
 lying farther to the north, with its rocks and its forests, 
 raises more per acre of all the cereals than we do, and 
 her potato crop averages 225 bushels, as against 82 
 bushels per acre in New York. 
 
 I have read with great interest the reports of your 
 president and the heads of the various departments for 
 
the years 1908-09, and note that an appropriation of ap- 
 proximately one million dollars for needed additional 
 buildings and equipment, and an increase in the annual 
 appropriation for maintenance of $50,000 per annum is 
 to be asked at the hands of the State Legislature. 
 
 The fact that the statement is made that unless en- 
 largements and improvements are provided for, "the 
 number of students that can be admitted to this College 
 of Agriculture must be immediately limited," suggests 
 the possibility of a doubt about this appropriation being 
 made. 
 
 This doubt is emphasized by the earnest appeal with 
 which Director Bailey closes the report of his depart- 
 ment. It is worthy of reproduction, and I want it given 
 the widest possible publicity. It is as follow-s : 
 
 'T wish to repeat, what I have so many times ex- 
 pressed, that we are beginning a college of agricul- 
 ture, not completing one. Few persons even yet 
 realize what aids an institution of this kind will con- 
 tribute to the welfare of the future. I am in posi- 
 tion to appreciate this, for the most urgent requests- 
 are constantly coming to my desk from all depart- 
 ments in the college for the means to do useful 
 work. These are all unselfish. They are not re- 
 quests to empower an officer to build up his depart- 
 ment, but to enable him to do work for his fellows 
 all over the state. I am powerless to provide the 
 means, and I see the opportunities pass and the men 
 grow old and the work of the people remaining not 
 done. I should have liked the opportunity to have 
 gone directly to the people with a plan complete 
 enough to have appealed to their imagination." 
 ] Can it be possible that the Legislature of this state 
 
 16 
 
will hesitate for one moment about an appropriation of 
 a million dollars for this important object? I will guar- 
 antee a return of one hundred times this amount each 
 year upon the investment. 
 
 If, through the improved methods worked out and 
 introduced by this college, the production of potatoes 
 alone per acre of the State could have been brought up 
 to that of the State of Maine, it would have added fifty- 
 two millions to the bank account of the farmers of New 
 York State on the crop of 1908. 
 
 In the year 1908 a friend of mine who some years 
 ago bought five thousand acres of land in New York 
 State raised 200 acres of corn, which yielded 50 bushels 
 of shelled corn per acre ; his potatoes averaged 350 bush- 
 els to the acre ; hay four tons, and beets 35 tons per acre. 
 This was the result not of intensive farming, but of sim- 
 ply intelligent farming, and these crops were raised in 
 the extreme northern part of the state — twelve miles 
 from the Canadian line, at the northern end of Lake 
 Champlain. 
 
 The same intelligent cultivation will produce like re- 
 sults in every county in the state. 
 
 The Department of Agriculture of the State of New 
 York publishes a bulletin containing a list of farms for 
 sale, and the man who can read it and appreciate the full 
 significance of this list without a feeling of humiliation 
 is lacking in that state pride and loyalty which every 
 citizen should possess. 
 
 Sixty-three thousand, four hundred and thirty-two 
 acres of improved farms, with fences, houses, barns, etc., 
 at an average price of $17.78 per acre. Nearly 100,000 
 acres at an average price of $25 per acre. 
 
 In the light of present conditions the agricultural situ- 
 
 11 
 
ation in this state seems utterly incomprehensible and 
 inexcusable ; but to those familiar with the history of ag- 
 ricultural development and evolution during the past 
 twenty-five years it is not so strange. 
 
 From the earliest settlements on the Atlantic Coast 
 until the last few years there have been great areas of 
 fertile lands open for pre-emption by the homesteader 
 or for sale very cheap and on long time by the western 
 railroads. As railroads were extended into the wilder- 
 ness settlers were located by the thousand, and each new 
 development was followed by an over-production of farm 
 products of every kind, which brought the price of these 
 products below the cost of production. Corn sold in 
 Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas for lo to 12 cents per 
 bushel, and I have seen it burned for fuel because it was 
 cheaper than wood or coal. These conditions produced a 
 ruinous collapse of values of farming land in New York, 
 Pennsylvania and New England. 
 
 Not alone in our country were these conditions mak- 
 ing themselves felt. Railroads were being built in India, 
 Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Argentina, and 
 cheap land and its products competed in every market 
 on the globe. The conditions then were the exact reverse 
 of the present. Then production was rapidly overtaking 
 consumption, with a steady fall in values. Now con- 
 sumption is overtaking production with alarming rapidity 
 and values are rising by leaps and bounds. Then in- 
 creased consumption could be provided for by increased 
 acreage ; now this is impossible. Increased consumption 
 can only be met by increased production on substantially 
 our present acreage. Then the outlook for agriculture 
 in the eastern states was dark and almost hopeless ; the 
 market was limited, prices low, and the tendency was 
 
 12 
 
always down. Now the market is unlimited at liberal 
 and steadily advancing prices. Then there was a reason 
 for cheap land in this and other eastern states ; now every 
 acre of agricultural land, worn out and impoverished as 
 much of it is, is worth $ioo per acre to build up and re- 
 plenish. Then there was little incentive to fertilize and 
 maintain the soil by the use of commercial fertilizers ; 
 now these expenditures w'ill pay an hundred fold. 
 
 Then the choice between the expense and work of 
 maintaining the fertility of the soil in the older states, or 
 opening up and cultivating the rich virgin soil in the 
 west was a legitimate one. 
 
 Now no such choice is possible. There is no alter- 
 native ; we must increase production by more intelligent 
 methods, or we must face the relentless certain coming 
 of the day when we shall not produce food enough to 
 supply our own necessities. 
 
 For the year just closed the product of the nation's 
 farms approximated nine billion dollars in value. No 
 man who has made this subject a study doubts that this 
 could be doubled without increase of acreage. 
 
 Mr. J. J. Hill, in a recent article published in The 
 World's Work, in speaking of the importance of this 
 campaign of better agricultural methods, said : 
 
 "The man who assumes to be th« farmer's friend 
 or hold his interests dear will constitute himself a 
 missionary of the new dispensation. It is an act of 
 patriotic service to the country. It is a contribu- 
 tion to the welfare of all humanity. It will strength- 
 en the pillars of a government that must otherwise 
 be endangered by some popular upheaval when the 
 land can no longer sustain the population that its 
 bosom bears. Here lies the true secret of our 
 
 13 
 
anxious interest in agricultural methods ; because, in 
 the long run, they mean life or death to future mill- 
 ions who are no strangers or invaders, but our own 
 children's children, and who will pass judgment 
 upon us according to what we have made of the 
 Avorld in which their lot is to be cast." 
 Is it possible to exaggerate or magnify the impor- 
 tance of this subject? Can the imagination conceive of a 
 duty of higher, broader patriotism or one that involves 
 more far-reaching, comprehensive philanthropy? 
 
 Ezra Cornell was himself a practical farmer. He had 
 been president of the State Agricultural Society. He 
 was in sympathy with all forms of industry and desired 
 to see it recognized in our educational institutions of high 
 grade. In speaking of Cornell University in simple, but 
 prophetic phrase, he said : 
 
 "I would found an institution where any person 
 can find instruction in any study." 
 It is no disparagement of other institutions or instru- 
 mentalities to say that this great institution that has 
 made the name of Cornell imperishable, has done more 
 and is doing more, for agriculture in this state than all 
 others combined ; but I believe in this direction it has not 
 passed the threshold of its usefulness. 
 
 I believe that from the halls of this university have 
 been graduated, and will be graduated, the men who are 
 destined to lead in a great renaissance of agricultural 
 possibilities, giving to this state a new birth of marvelous 
 opportunity, of wonderful achievement, and that in lead- 
 ing this great work in this grand old Empire State you 
 will find yourselves leaders in a movement that will 
 be epochal in significance, and continent wide in scope. 
 
 14 
 
The James Kempstei- Print