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Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of 
 the Agricultural Experiment Station, 
 
 WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
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 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BaL by 
 
 E. DAVENPORT 
 
 University of Illinois 
 
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 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 
 
This address was delivered first at the dedication 
 of the Agricultural Building, University of Maine, 
 January 20; and read as here printed at the Illinois 
 5tate Farmers Institute, Rockford, Illinois, February 
 24, 1909. 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OF 
 
 AMERICAN AGRICULTURE 
 
 WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 Agriculture is a remarkable occupation for a number of 
 significant reasons: 
 
 1. It engages the time and attention of half our people 
 and it will always absorb the lives and energies of a very 
 large proportion of the race. 
 
 2. This is the only considerable calling in which the 
 home is situated in close connection and in intimate contact 
 with the heart of the business so that all members of the 
 family, men, women and children alike, live in the atmos¬ 
 phere of the occupation and each finds some useful part to 
 do as a contribution to the general effort; that is, agriculture 
 is not only an occupation but a mode of life as well, and 
 whatever touches and uplifts the one is bound to powerfully 
 react upon the other. 
 
 3. The conditions of country life are peculiar in their 
 contribution to health, their stimulus to personal initiative 
 and their fostering influence upon that spirit of individualism 
 upon which rest our free institutions and our democratic 
 government. The country is a good place in which to be 
 born. 
 
 4. The business of farming, dealing as it does at every 
 step with the subtlest laws of nature, is capable of infinite 
 improvement and of indefinite development as soon and as 
 rapidly as the findings of science are applied to its affairs. 
 
 5. The occupation is, and from the nature of the case 
 must always remain permanent, because all men forever 
 
2 
 
 must subscribe to the decree of nature and eat, for food is the 
 fuel that feeds the human engine, and in the last analysis 
 our future development as a race will be conditioned upon 
 our success in providing an assured and independent food 
 supply, abundant and suitable for a highly developed and 
 always advancing civilization. 
 
 6. There is, therefore, a public as well as a private side 
 to this matter of agricultural development; and it is because 
 of this public and exceptional interest in this particular oc¬ 
 cupation that we have established and maintained at public 
 expense in every state of the Union institutions whose busi¬ 
 ness it is not only to instruct in the most advanced methods 
 of agricultural practice, but also to conduct research through 
 experiments by the most approved methods with a view of 
 adding to our knowledge of the scientific facts and principles 
 upon which further development of agriculture and of 
 country life may be established. 
 
 It is exceedingly important that the aims and purposes 
 of this modern educational movement be clearly understood 
 and especially that they be not misunderstood. 
 
 First of all the purpose of agricultural education and re¬ 
 search is not to benefit the farmer as an individual or even 
 farmers as a favored class. The principal aim of other forms 
 of education in the past was to benefit their devotees person¬ 
 ally without much regard to the consequences, either public 
 or private. Not so with this form of education. Its primary 
 purpose is the development of agriculture as a productive 
 occupation and incidentally and necessarily of the people 
 who live by farming. In other words, its first objective is 
 distinctly a public one, and all other considerations are 
 secondary and subsidiary. 
 
 Now the public is not interested in the question whether 
 John Smith succeeds or fails at farming: indeed, it does not 
 care whether he farms at all or what he does or does not do 
 so long as he does not become a public charge and so long 
 as he continues to contribute some share to the public good. 
 
 But the public is interested that somebody should sue- 
 
3 
 
 ceed in farming. More than that, it is interested that 
 enough should succeed and that they should succeed well 
 enough to operate the land to the best advantage and provide 
 an assured food supply for all the people. Now the lands 
 cannot be operated to the best advantage by an ignorant 
 peasantry. Only men of good parts educated in the princi¬ 
 ples involved can handle these lands in such a way as to 
 secure a maximum of human and animal food at the least 
 expense and at the same time preserve their producing 
 power against future needs. 
 
 And so it is that the aims and purposes of agricultural 
 education and research are primarily the promotion of 
 public safety in the matter of a racial food supply, to which 
 matter the education and information of individuals is an 
 essential but subsidiary incident: which incident, however, 
 is certain to result in producing a country population of a 
 superior type, all of which also reacts powerfully upon the 
 public good in matters both social and political. 
 
 In the last analysis and reduced to the lowest terms, 
 therefore, the fundamental purpose of agricultural education 
 and research is the development of agriculture as a produc¬ 
 tive occupation and of the agricultural people as a numerous 
 and important part of the social and political fabric. 
 
 Development is, therefore, the central thought in educa¬ 
 tional activity along agricultural lines to-day and the devel¬ 
 opment of American agriculture to its highest attainable 
 estate both as a business and as a mode of life is the high 
 purpose for which the agricultural colleges and experiment 
 stations were founded and are supported by a far-seeing and 
 liberal-minded public. It is profitable, and in every way 
 highly important that we all pause a moment from time to 
 time to gain the clearest and most comprehensive understand¬ 
 ing possible of all that is involved in so important a matter. 
 Accordingly, that we may all alike be intelligent and work 
 together to a common end, I invite your attention somewhat 
 carefully to the details of this development which may be 
 
4 
 
 briefly outlined under six fairly definite propositions as 
 follows: 
 
 1. An Agriculture Profitable. The first step in the de¬ 
 velopment of any business is to “make it pay”. Whatever 
 we may say about the glories of country life, and it is much; 
 whatever the songs we sing of the free air, the twittering 
 birds and the blessed sunshine, and they are many; after all 
 and before all, farming is a business as well as a mode of 
 life, and the first and the fundamental step in its develop¬ 
 ment is to put it on a paying basis. Our colleges and our ex¬ 
 periment stations have done well, therefore, to devote their 
 first, and up to this time their principal efforts to the business 
 of increasing the profits of farming. In the past, farming 
 was not a capitalized industry and such a thing as failure was 
 almost impossible. From now on, however, farming is to be 
 a capitalized occupation and failure will be relatively easy; 
 for the new discoveries of science, while they tend to es¬ 
 tablish the business on a sounder basis, do not make it easier 
 in the sense of better adapting it to the novice or to men of 
 low capacity. Agriculture is rapidly becoming more difficult, 
 calling not for less but for more, of brains, of knowledge 
 and of executive ability, and as such it is rapidly challenging 
 the attention of the brightest men, who will be attracted 
 into the calling about in proportion as they can feel the pos¬ 
 sibility of reasonable profits. 
 
 No business can hold the respect and the services of 
 men of ability except it afford them a reasonable reward for 
 what they put into it, and certainly no occupation can 
 commend itself to ambitious young men until it offers prom¬ 
 ise of a good and reliable income. 
 
 In this connection it is most significant to note the 
 increased respect for agriculture and the new interest in 
 farming and in country life that commenced to spring up 
 among all classes almost immediately upon the work of the 
 college and station in showing how to begin to put this 
 business on a scientific and paying basis, and it is significant, 
 too, that we now hear less and see less of the drift from the 
 
5 
 
 farm to the town, and that men of sound business sense and 
 wide experience are beginning to look to the land and to 
 agriculture not only as a safe business but in every way as a 
 desirable occupation. This is the main influence that will 
 regulate the flow from the country to the town and hold in 
 check that insane rush of young men cityward that we have 
 all deplored for these many years. 
 
 2. An Agriculture Productive. It is not enough that 
 agriculture should be profitable. In its development it must 
 also become in the very near future enormously productive. 
 How pressing this point will shortly become few people are 
 able to realize, so abundantly have the virgin soils of this 
 country produced in the past; so boundless have been their 
 extent and so small has our population been almost up to 
 the present day. 
 
 A little careful consideration, however, will speedily 
 show that conditions in this respect are to undergo a funda¬ 
 mental change in the very near future indeed. 
 
 Under good conditions, the human animal can double 
 his numbers every twenty-Awe years. By the aid of im¬ 
 migration and despite the ravages of four wars, we have 
 maintained this rate of increase in this country since the 
 Revolution and the population of the United States doubled 
 four times in the last hundred years. If we maintain this 
 rate of increase for another century—and something is wrong 
 if we do not—if we maintain this rate of increase we should 
 have in this country a hundred years from now no less than 
 twelve hundred millions of people, a hundred millions of 
 whom should live in Illinois. Under these conditions not 
 less than thirty millions should live in the state of Maine,— 
 that is, the population of the entire United States at the 
 time of the Civil War would then be crowded into a single 
 one of our smaller states and that within the present 
 century. 
 
 For various reasons this ratio of increase cannot much 
 longer be maintained, yet it is the natural rate and it tends 
 to show us what would come about under normal conditions 
 
6 
 
 within a century,—and what is a century in the life history 
 of a people? 
 
 Believe me, race suicide if it comes will be due not to a 
 failure of the birth rate: it will be from our sheer neglect to 
 maintain conditions that will insure food for the people. 
 This is the form of race suicide against which we need most 
 to protect ourselves, and it is none too soon to begin. The 
 world has not yet learned how to feed such a population as 
 is just ahead and before the present century is ended the 
 largest single public issue will be that of bread. 
 
 Within the lifetime of children born to-day, scarcity of 
 labor will be a matter of history, and abundance of cheap 
 food will be a tale that is told by the gran’ther in his chim¬ 
 ney corner dozing in his dotage. We are educating in our 
 schools to-day a generation of children to live a life that we 
 ourselves have never seen and that history does not record, 
 and we do well if we soberly calculate what their conditions 
 of life are likely to be and mend our methods accordingly. 
 
 We were three hundred years in getting a population of 
 five millions of people, so slowly do numbers pile up when 
 the base is small, whatever the ratio, but we have increased 
 ninety millions in the last hundred years. I very well 
 remember when our population was but thirty millions and 
 I am no relative of Methusaleh, either. Many of you re¬ 
 member when it was but fifteen, but now it has reached ap¬ 
 proximately one hundred millions. With such a base and 
 with modern conditions of life, this country can and will pro¬ 
 duce men at a rate the world has never seen. We can now 
 produce in this country as much increased population in the 
 next twenty-five years as we produced in the whole four hun¬ 
 dred years since its discovery by white men, and we can 
 produce twice as many more in the next twenty-five. In 
 fifty years from now we shall have the population of China 
 in this country, unless something goes wrong, and it is the 
 business of agriculture to learn how to feed them, and feed 
 them well. When it has learned this, it will have learned 
 many a lesson the colleges do not now know how to teach. 
 
7 
 
 We have thought but little on these things because all 
 of our experience has been with an insufficient population 
 and we have even courted immigration as a source of labor. 
 Had you thought of it? with our present population matured 
 we can in ten years duplicate every emigrant dead or alive 
 that ever touched this country. We have never yet been 
 conscious of our population as far as adults are concerned, 
 because we have had room and food and labor in superabun¬ 
 dance. But we have never gone up against such numbers as 
 are just ahead,the whisperings of whose coming may be found 
 in the housing and the teaching of our now enormous child 
 population. When Chicago calls for eight million dollars 
 worth of additional public school buildings in the next two 
 years, you hear from a tide of young humanity whose num¬ 
 bers and reproducing powers will make new problems for 
 our race and for its agriculture to solve. Not the least of 
 these will relate to the power of the land to produce food for 
 man and the animals he has domesticated. 
 
 Aye! for the animals—there is another rub. We revel 
 now in the luxury of animal life. Every family on the aver¬ 
 age, has a horse, four head of cattle, four sheep and four 
 pigs with some few millions to spare. They literally work 
 and eat and root for us and we consume their bodies and 
 their body products with a prodigality that no dense popu¬ 
 lation has ever yet found possible. Now animal service is 
 an expensive luxury when food becomes costly. Animal 
 food is approximately ten times as expensive as vegetable; 
 that is to say, it takes ten pounds of grain to make a pound 
 of flesh, which is no more valuable for supporting life than 
 is any one of the ten pounds of grain that went to make it. 
 
 Our descendants will face the day when they must sur¬ 
 render some of this animal life as surely as they face the 
 day of their birth, and when we consider the fact that eco¬ 
 nomic nitrogen production involves leguminous plants that 
 are fit only for animal food, we will begin to see how compli¬ 
 cated is the problem of developing an agriculture sufficiently 
 productive to meet coming requirements without distress. 
 
8 
 
 3. An Agriculture Permanent. The conditions that have 
 just been discussed will not be temporary and transient: 
 they will be enduring, yes, permanent, and they must be 
 met by a permanent agriculture—a thing the world has 
 never yet suceeded in establishing. No race has ever yet 
 learned to feed itself except at the expense of fertility of 
 their own or of some other country. Other races have come 
 up against this problem and have gone down under it. 
 
 Where is Carthage to-day? Where is Egypt, whose 
 civilization once flourished upon fertility brought down from 
 the highlands of a great interior? What of Palestine, that 
 once flowed with milk and honey and blossomed as the rose, 
 but now supports only a miserable and straggling population 
 of wandering Arabs ? What of Babylon, amid whose ‘ ‘heaps” 
 the jackal snarls where once kings held revelry and where 
 civilization was born in the richest river valley in all the 
 earth? What of India, where struggling millions maintain 
 their racial existence at the cost of periodic and decimating 
 famine relieved from other regions that have not yet met 
 the “Great Issue”? What of China? With a population of 
 four hundred to the square mile, it must presently either 
 move, adopt new methods, or starve. It is pointed out as a 
 people who have solved in some uncanny way the problem 
 of a permanent agriculture and a permanent food supply, 
 yet good authority says that on the highlands are regions 
 once peopled and now abandoned, where for stretches of ten 
 miles no man lives. 
 
 What of England? She is a new country, yet she long 
 ago faced failing fertility and built fleets of ships to carry 
 guano from the South Sea Islands, exhausting within the 
 recollection of men sitting here, those natural beds which 
 the seabirds have been ages in producing. Not only that, 
 she has brought mummies from Egypt to fertilize English 
 soil that the Englishman might have his beef, though 
 already bread riots wage from time to time in London. So 
 narrow is the margin on which English agriculture is main¬ 
 tained that good judges say that the law of primogeniture 
 
9 
 
 is the only fact that makes beef production still possible in 
 England. 
 
 Our Federal Government announces the newly discov¬ 
 ered theory that lands do not wear out, but the fact remains 
 that large sections of Old Virginia are so worn as to be 
 abandoned and families that once entertained presidents and 
 foreign diplomats, now that the wheat yield has dropped to 
 ten or twenty per cent of its former magnitude, eke out the 
 income by keeping summer boarders. 
 
 Every intelligent man knows that the old cotton and to¬ 
 bacco lands of the South are badly worn and have lost for¬ 
 ever their power of spontaneous production. That great 
 grain-growing region in southern Illinois, known locally as 
 “Egypt,” covers an area large enough to make ten such 
 states as Rhode Island, much of it was exhausted, so far as 
 profitable agriculture is concerned, by two generations of 
 grain farming, until some of the land became in local par¬ 
 lance “too poor to raise a disturbance.” It is fortunately 
 being rapidly restored by methods devised by the Experi¬ 
 ment Station but the saddest fact is that the effects of soil 
 impoverishment had in some cases gone so far as to affect 
 the people, and they were unable to raise even the small 
 initial cost of restoration, in which case, of course, the prob¬ 
 lem must go over to men of capital who had sojourned on 
 more fortunate lands. 
 
 Not only does all this have a bearing upon the problem 
 of a permanent agriculture, but added to this is the fact that 
 our “boundless prairies” with their “inexhaustible fertility” 
 are found upon examination to be surprisingly short in phos¬ 
 phorus. 
 
 If we lack nitrogen, we know now howto get it from the 
 inexhaustible supplies of the air by the use of leguminous 
 crops. If we lack potassium, the natural deposits are ap¬ 
 parently unlimited, but when we lack phosphorus we are in 
 need of a commodity absolutely essential to the production 
 of food and one which exists in usable form in but exceed¬ 
 ingly limited areas on the earth. 
 
10 
 
 Considering all this,—considering, too, the fact that at 
 the present rate of consumption all the American deposits 
 of high grade phosphate rock will be exhausted before the 
 end of the present century, and considering our own over¬ 
 whelming increased need for food in the very near future, 
 I am constrained to say that in the interest of self-protection 
 and the founding of a permanent system of American agri¬ 
 culture, the annual exportation of a million tons of phos¬ 
 phate rock to Germany ought to be stopped, by constitutional 
 amendment if necessary. 
 
 No man can study for a moment the entirely new con¬ 
 ditions and problems that will confront our people in the 
 immediate future without realizing that the establishment 
 of agricultural colleges and experiment stations was the 
 largest act of foresighted wisdom in recorded history, nor 
 can he fail to realize that their adequate maintenance and fost¬ 
 ering support is not only the first duty but one of the high¬ 
 est public privileges of the commonwealth of our day and 
 time. 
 
 There is to be, in the very near future, a struggle for 
 land and the food it will produce, such as the world has 
 never yet beheld. He who knows where and how to look 
 can see it coming. The African activity among western 
 European nations is a part of it. It is always cheaper to 
 move than to stay when over-population and failing fertility 
 threaten a shortage of food—providing there is any place to 
 move into; that is, providing we can dispossess the other 
 party and his land is worth the contest. 
 
 However that may be as an abstract proposition, for us 
 there is no more moving. For us there are no more “new 
 worlds”. For us there is little more “Out West.” Our for¬ 
 tune and our future, whatever they may be, are staked down 
 on the American Continent. Literally “here we rest” and 
 whether we like it or not, we must devise and establish a 
 permanent agriculture here or go down in the attempt. 
 
 Our descendants will certainly be as cultured as we: 
 they ought to be more so. Their needs surely will not be 
 
 t 
 
11 
 
 fewer or of a more modest character. Their numbers will be 
 vastly greater and unless we, not they , can succeed in found¬ 
 ing a permanent agriculture, the race will degenerate and 
 end where it commenced, in poverty and barbarism. 
 
 I have already pointed out that restorative and perma¬ 
 nent systems must be established before the people are in dis¬ 
 tress for the necessities of life. It is we who must discover 
 and establish this permanent system. There is no time to 
 be lost, for we do not yet know how to do it and a stupendous 
 population is just upon us. It is none to soon to attack 
 with all the scientific vigor of all the Experiment Stations of 
 all the States this perfectly stupendous problem which will 
 shortly bear harder upon us than upon any contemporaneous 
 race in the world except the Hindus and the Chinese who 
 have almost certainly delayed too long and lost their chance. 
 European nations will be occupied for generations yet in ex¬ 
 planting Africa and perhaps South America and we before 
 any other modern nation must face the issue of a permanent 
 agriculture. 
 
 We have no right to dodge this issue now while we are 
 few and young and wealthy. It is our own descendants 
 whose lives and happiness we literally hold in the hollow of 
 our hands and he who shirks that responsibility is guilty of 
 a crime against his race beside which ordinary treason is tri¬ 
 vial, and when we are called, as we are, to the task of estab¬ 
 lishing if we can a permanent agriculture, it is a call of the 
 race for a chance to live and work out its destiny. 
 
 So much for what may be called the business side of 
 farming—an agriculture that is reasonably profitable, highly 
 productive, and certainly permanent. What now on the 
 human side? What is the development of the farmer as a 
 man to match the development of his business as an occupa¬ 
 tion? And so I come to the next count in our series of 
 development. 
 
 4. The Country Comfortable. Agriculture is not only a 
 business; it is a mode of life as well, and if it is to be suc¬ 
 cessful in the latter particular it must in the end afford its 
 
12 
 
 devotees the same comforts of life as are obtainable in other 
 occupations. This has not hitherto been possible, but its 
 early realization is becoming every day more promising and 
 if the colleges and stations perform their whole duty in this 
 direction and if they are supported by the people, as they 
 ought to be supported, then one of the earliest and most dis¬ 
 tinctive developments of our agriculture will be in creature 
 comforts on the farm. 
 
 This development will largely take the special form of 
 modern conveniences including labor-saving equipments in 
 the farmhouse. The farmer has provided himself with all 
 sorts of machinery and ingenious mechanical devices not 
 only to cheapen production but to make labor easier for him¬ 
 self, his hired help and even his animals. In the meantime 
 his wife gets on with few improvements and with no real 
 conveniences, living and scraping along as best she can 
 against the day when the family shall build its home in town 
 and “have the conveniences”. By modern conveniences are 
 generally meant bath room and toilet facilities, a lighting 
 system and running water inside the house. That is about 
 all but it would take a book to recite what has been sacri¬ 
 ficed in going to town to get these things. 
 
 The farmer has abandoned his business. He has broken 
 up his children’s home. He has exposed his little ones to the 
 unbridled dangers of the small town. He has set before them 
 the example of idleness. He has turned his back upon the 
 farm that has made his wealth and stripped the land of its 
 fertility to build in the town the home to which the farm was 
 entitled. He has stripped the country of its earnings to 
 build up the city and add to its numbers a wholly useless 
 and undesirable population. So common has this thing be¬ 
 come as to excite public alarm and no one topic rings a more 
 significant note through the findings of the Country Life 
 Commission than the abandonment of the farm at the stage 
 of house building. 
 
 The uselessness of all this under even present condi¬ 
 tions was, I think, first called to public attention in an ad- 
 
13 
 
 dress by Mrs. Davenport at the Illinois Farmers’ Institute 
 at Peoria in February of last year. She had had an exten¬ 
 sive experience on the farm and had lived a good number of 
 years in town. With a natural mechanical instinct and some 
 experience in building, she saw how thoroughly the conven¬ 
 iences and the labor of the house had been overlooked, rela¬ 
 tively speaking, by both inventor and designer except where 
 conditions of life, as in the city, compelled some decent at¬ 
 tention to sanitary measures, evolving the bath room, the 
 toilet and the slop sink. She saw how completely the labor 
 of the house had been left to servants in the homes of the 
 wealthy or endured by the wife unable to afford a servant, 
 neither of which conditions developed conveniences for per¬ 
 forming the household labor. This comparative poverty in 
 house equipment is also partly due to the lack of attention 
 on the part of the inventors and activity of manufactures, 
 all of which is traceable to another initial abomination—that 
 ancient and dishonorable custom by which the husband car¬ 
 ries the pocketbook and so often opens it only upon humil¬ 
 iating supplication for a share of what the wife on the farm 
 has fairly earned. 
 
 Mrs. Davenport knew that conditions had commenced 
 to mend themselves in certain particulars and were capable 
 of still further improvement. Accordingly she set out to 
 learn how far and to what extent the farm house can now be 
 equipped not only with the so-called modern conveniences, 
 but with still further devices for saving labor. The results 
 of her study were given in the address already referred to 
 and may be briefly summarized as follows: 
 
 The enterprise of the best farmers in equipping the farm 
 with machinery has already reached the stage of the small 
 gasolene engine for running the machinery of the barns and 
 especially for pumping water, generally into small or elevat¬ 
 ed tanks subject to freezing, an evolution from the old and 
 unreliable wind mill. 
 
 Beginning at this point with the gasolene engine which 
 stands as a kind of connecting link between the machinery 
 
14 
 
 of the farm and that of the house, it appears that this little 
 engine, first of all, can pump water, both hard and soft, in¬ 
 to the Kewanee automatic system and secure a pressure of 
 70 pounds per square inch in air tight tanks standing in the 
 basement or buried in the ground beyond the reach of frost. 
 This is as good as the best city pressure and is abundant to 
 throw water over any of the buildings, carry it into both 
 house and barn and nearby fields and put both hard and soft 
 water, hot and cold, on all the floors of the house. It will 
 also run a water motor—cost, six dollars,—sufficiently power¬ 
 ful to operate the washing machine and do the hardest part 
 of the hardest job about any home—all for six dollars under 
 pressure. This same engine can run a gasolene heated man¬ 
 gle with a capacity of a napkin a minute or a table cloth every 
 six minutes. It may also operate a storage battery electric 
 light plant. Not only that, it can furnish the power for the 
 churn and other small machinery, and last of all, it can 
 operate a vacuum cleaner system whose installation in the 
 private house is now entirely feasible. 
 
 Besides this, the soil absorption system will care for the 
 waste from bathroom, laundry and slop sink as completely 
 and as satisfactorily as the best city sewer. If economy is 
 imperative, acetylene or gasolene may be substituted for the 
 electric lights, or if electricity is used, the small machinery 
 may be operated by electric motors. 
 
 This is actually being done on the farm now in Illinois, 
 and I doubt not elsewhere. A few months ago our Engineer¬ 
 ing Experiment Station issued a bulletin on electric light¬ 
 ing in private houses. You will be interested to know that 
 we have had more calls for this material, which was reprint¬ 
 ed as a circular by the Agricultural Experiment Station, 
 than for anything ever issued by the Station, showing most 
 significantly the direction of the drift of the public mind. 
 
 Here we have water pressure, bath and toilet room, a 
 lighting plant, power laundry machinery, vacuum cleaner, 
 all that any city home can secure in the way of modern con¬ 
 veniences and more than can be had there, except with dif- 
 
15 
 
 ficulty, for city residences commonly do not possess a source 
 of power,—all this, as well as in the city and better. 
 
 I was amazed, optimist though I am, at the results of 
 this investigation into the possibilities of the independent 
 plant, at what can be done, not in the future, but now in the 
 equipment of the farm home with the conveniencies of human 
 life. ^ 
 
 But, you will say, think of the expense! Yes, it is costly, 
 all good things are costly. Farm machinery is costly, es¬ 
 pecially a reaper that is seldom operated ten days out of the 
 year and lasts on the average but three years. It is all 
 costly, but remember that we are talking about a class of 
 people who ride always in covered carriages, drive good 
 horses and are able to go to town to live. 
 
 Now an entire bath room outfit can be bought and installed 
 for the price of a single covered buggy and will outlast the 
 buggy half a dozen times over. The vacuum cleaner, that 
 acme of comfort and luxury, will cost the price of a good horse 
 or a medium team. Yes, it is costly. The whole outfit will cost 
 a thousand dollars, perhaps twelve or fifteen hundred with 
 the engine, depending upon the size and grade of the outfit. 
 
 Yes, it will cost just about ivhat a city building lot will 
 cost in any town worth living in and not on a principal street 
 either. In other words, the moment the farmer moves to 
 town to secure “modern conveniences”, he planks down at 
 the outset for a building site as much money as it would take 
 to provide all these things and more on the farm he has left 
 behind. Then, in addition, he will need to draw generous 
 quarterly checks for water rates, gas bills, electric lights and 
 invest from two to three thousand additional for income to 
 meet the extra cost of taxation. 
 
 Many of the choicest physical blessings are inherent in 
 country life, such as good air, plenty of room, open sunshine, 
 and comparative freedom from dangerously infectious dis¬ 
 eases. Others are being rapidly added, such as the tele¬ 
 phone, which is both better and cheaper than in the city; 
 the rural delivery ot mail by which the farms are better 
 
16 
 
 served than are most towns, and the consolidated secondary 
 school by which the farmers’ children will soon receive liter¬ 
 ally from the father’s roof the best education in the world. 
 
 When, now, we have learned to build comfortable homes 
 for ourselves and our children, then will the country be of all 
 places for living the most delightful and the most desirable 
 from the greatest variety of standpoints. 
 
 5. The Country Beautiful. Time and space are all too 
 short for saying all that ought to be said about the human 
 side of agricultural development, but I shall steal a word and 
 a moment to enter a plea for the country beautiful; some¬ 
 thing to please the eye and uplift the soul; something be¬ 
 yond the body; something that shall foreshadow here what 
 Heaven may be hereafter. 
 
 First of all, I plead for the early evolution of a suitable 
 country architecture: for house and barn exteriors that shall 
 blend with the natural features of their surroundings. We 
 build a barn on the ugliest lines that human ingenuity can 
 devise, often go the limits by painting it red and then won¬ 
 der why it is so often struck by lightning. 
 
 Let the country house be built on good lines within and 
 without. Let it be generously and hospitably big, with broad 
 low roof and wide projection. Let it be surrounded by por¬ 
 ches wide and deep, and inside, let the rooms be generous 
 and the stairways broad. Let the colors everywhere be 
 strong but soft, and outside let it blend into its setting of 
 lawn and trees as if this home had been builded in a spot 
 which Nature had made expressly for the place where a 
 family might live and where children might be born and grow 
 up and go out into the world to engage in and succeed in 
 many things, but never to forget the childhood home of 
 blessed memory. 
 
 All this is a sentimental side of our business, I know, 
 but after all, sentiment is the strongest thing in the world, 
 and you and I may not know the racial asset of a dozen gen¬ 
 eration^ born and reared in such homes as may now be estab¬ 
 lished on the farm. 
 
17 
 
 It is traditional to assume a plain, hard life, destitute of 
 comforts for the family on the farm. In this we do err. 
 Nothing is farther from the essential. We cannot build and 
 maintain a permanent agriculture on that proposition. In 
 such an assumption we confuse the necessary hardships of 
 the pioneer with the possibilities of the open country. 
 
 Farming and pioneering started off together and the life 
 of the pioneer farmer was hard, not because he was a farmer 
 but because he was a pioneer. Nature was unsubdued- 
 Men and women were poor, and life was hard at the best 
 when necessities were counted luxuries. But those days are 
 over on real agricultural lands, and farming is coming in¬ 
 to its own. There are non-agricultural lands where country 
 life will continue hard, but this is not American agriculture. 
 These are not farmers. Look for American agriculture on 
 agricultural lands and you will find it in any state of the 
 Union. Here pioneering and farming have parted company 
 forever. Farming will go its way on its own plan and if you 
 look for it here, you will find it a thousand years from now. 
 I wonder what it will be like? The people then will be our 
 descendants; yours and mine. I wonder what they will think 
 of us, and how they will record history between now and 
 then. I should like to be well thought of by them, for they 
 ought to be a very superior people, and they will be if we 
 all be wise, for what they are then will depend not a little 
 upon what we do now. 
 
 Let us at once set about building country homes that shall 
 last for generations. Let us give them plenty of room, with 
 broad lawns and much grass. Let there be some flowers 
 and shrubbery to add a touch of brightness but above all, 
 let there be trees , trees , long-lived trees , that will tell the chil¬ 
 dren of the future that their grandfathers, who are we, took 
 thought for them. Let the whole picture have its setting in 
 a natural frame of forests and of hills, of fields where cattle 
 be, of meadows and lakes and running water. So shall we 
 build and in this way only leave our best thoughts behind. 
 So will the farm at last come into its own. 
 
18 
 
 6. The Country Educated. And now I come to the last, 
 which is also the greatest of the separate features of agricul¬ 
 tural development. I refer to the education and the culture 
 of the men and women who shall live upon the land and till 
 our soil—it is ours and not theirs—who shall think our 
 thoughts as we cannot think them amid the stress and strain 
 and struggle of the city; who shall keep the country as the 
 great breeding ground where children may grow up into men 
 and women without that prematurity and that dangerous 
 sophistication that mark so many of the city born and bred. 
 
 This matter involves the whole philosophy of agricul¬ 
 tural education, both of collegiate and secondary grade; in¬ 
 deed, it covers a large part of our educational effort, for it 
 involves the education of half our population, and on this 
 matter, I beg to speak briefly but to the point. 
 
 Agricultural education is but a feature, albeit a large 
 and important one, but none the less it is a feature of our 
 system of universal education, and the spirit and purpose of 
 our system of universal education, as I understand it, is this: 
 to so educate all men as bo make them first of all self- 
 supporting and useful contributors to some feature—no mat¬ 
 ter what—of the public good, and second, to encourage and 
 develop in their several personalities the best that is in 
 them as human beings and members of a rapidly advancing 
 society whose capabilities, if not unlimited, are as yet un¬ 
 known. 
 
 Universal education is an attempt to make the most not 
 only of the exceptional man but of all normal men, the 
 masses of whom really represent the race and limit its 
 achievements and advance. As half the people live by 
 farming, the problem of agricultural education shoulders 
 one-half the problem of universal education, at least so far 
 as numbers go: moreover, it is the half that will have more 
 than its share to do in fixing the future of all classes. How 
 now shall agricultural education be conducted so as to meet 
 these broad requirements felt alike by farmers and all other 
 members of our social body? 
 
19 
 
 First of all, agricultural education must be so conducted 
 as to make the farmers efficient in a business way. It has 
 taken more than a generation to begin to find all that is in¬ 
 volved in this feature only of education for the business of 
 farming, and few men yet realize that, of all forms of educa¬ 
 tion, that in technical agriculture is the most costly if it is 
 made good enough to be really worth while. The young 
 man does not want to study about cattle: he needs to study 
 cattle themselves, a distinction not yet observed, I am sorry 
 to say, in some of our institutions of learning. 
 
 The young man who is fitting himself for farming wants 
 not a mass of information about present day agricultural 
 practice: that will pass and it ought to pass. It is compara¬ 
 tively easy to teach but it will be out of date and gone be¬ 
 fore it can serve a man now in school, as a definite guide to 
 procedure. Furthermore he wants this not in the university 
 only, accessible merely to those who may go to college but 
 he wants it and must have it in every high school that it may 
 be accessible from the home. He wants it not in a few con¬ 
 gressional district schools separated from everything else 
 educational, but he wants it wherever men from the country 
 seek an education and he wants it associated with all the 
 other subjects and where other men are educated. 
 
 What he wants from a business standpoint is instruction 
 in the principles involved in agriculture so far as they are 
 known and in methods of investigation after the unknown, 
 that he may keep himself intelligent as this great business 
 of agricultural development proceeds before his eyes day by 
 day. All this is extremely difficult for both teacher and 
 student, and it involves an expense for skilled men, for 
 equipment and for research, such as is not yet appreciated 
 by anybody, much less by public men. 
 
 Teachers and investigators who have skill in this line 
 are few and their services are extremely valuable, so valua¬ 
 ble that the state which fills its quota with the best must 
 stand ready to pay teaching salaries such as have never yet 
 been paid. They must also devote money to equipment and 
 
20 
 
 facilities for research to an extent which makes all that has 
 yet been done look microscopic and miserable—all this must 
 be done if this development of agriculture is to proceed 
 along all these lines as fast and as surely as it ought to pro¬ 
 ceed. 
 
 So much for the technical side: for what a man must 
 know if he is to occupy the soil of the public domain to the 
 best advantage to himself and to the state. Because of what 
 I am about to say and lest I then be misunderstood, let me 
 remark before passing, that I am a stickler for technical 
 education both collegiate and secondary and for agricultural 
 research of the most strictly technical character beyond any¬ 
 thing that any man has ever yet dared to propose. 
 
 But that is not all. There remains a human side to 
 agriculture. The farmer is not only a tiller of the soil; he 
 is a man and a member of our permanent society; moreover, 
 he is a voting member of the body politic. This is only 
 another way of saying that as a man he possesses inherent 
 privileges for himself and owes substantial duties to the 
 community quite outside and beyond the limits of his voca¬ 
 tion and his education therefore. 
 
 So I enter a protest against that philosophy of education 
 and that system of schools which would by design or by 
 necessity confine the education of a farmer or of any other 
 man, industrial or non-industrial, to the limits of his voca- 
 tionl and business needs, and I protest against the establish¬ 
 ment of separate agricultural schools in this country for the 
 same reasons that I protest against the exclusion of the farm¬ 
 er from good society or any other common interest of Amer¬ 
 ican development. 
 
 Every man is or ought to be bigger than his business. 
 He does not and should not be so educated as to live for his 
 business, he is in business that he may live, and the large 
 question- the largest of all questions before any man—is, what 
 shall he do with himself? what shall he do with the result of 
 his earnings? how shall he justify his existence? He has a 
 right to be so educated as to answer these questions, which 
 
21 
 
 are final; to be in business for something other than to con¬ 
 duct business or while away the time. 
 
 And so a good part of the education of the farmer as of 
 other men is, or should be, non-vocational, and of such charac¬ 
 ter as shall best suit his individual tastes and surroundings. 
 It will be history and economics for one, philosophy for an¬ 
 other, language and the classics for a third, music, painting or 
 some other form of art for others—I care not what it is, only 
 so that it is something that develops human faculties outside 
 vocational needs, and only so it serves to broaden rather 
 than to narrow which is the inevitable consequence of valu¬ 
 able technical training. 
 
 I therefore enter a plea and a demand for the broadest 
 possible views regarding agricultural education. The farm¬ 
 er as a man is no different than other men unless we make 
 him so by our education, and if we do the time will come 
 when other men of other classes will share with him the con¬ 
 sequences of a short-sighted and inadequate system of educa¬ 
 tion for industrial purposes. 
 
 A scheme for the education of farmers in separate schools 
 is being industriously advocated these days by a class of 
 educators who seem to feel that a little education, and that al¬ 
 most exclusively technical, is sufficient for farming pur¬ 
 poses, and that the European peasant school is a model. 
 The advocates of this sort of school overlook certain impor¬ 
 tant features of agricultural education and of the philosophy 
 of education in general: they overlook the fact that the pros¬ 
 pective farmer should be educated as a man as well as a 
 farmer; in other words, that the farmer’s, like every man’s 
 education, should include both the technical and the non¬ 
 technical, both the vocational and the non-vocational. 
 
 They overlook the fact that we cannot safely educate 
 separate professions in separate schools, for to do so is to 
 build up distinct classes, each educated for and prejudiced in 
 its own affairs and against the world. 
 
 They overlook the fact that there is a great body of 
 knowledge that can form the background and the backbone 
 
22 
 
 of the education of all men for all pursuits, and that this is 
 our chiefest reliance for holding our people together as one 
 people. 
 
 They overlook the highly educational influence of mere 
 association with other men as secured in universities which 
 fit for all the affairs of life. 
 
 They overlook the capacity of the American secondary 
 school to still further broaden its curriculum and widen its 
 educational influence. This thoroughly unique American 
 institution is abundantly able to reflect in its atmosphere and 
 its class rooms the same cosmopolitan influence that consti¬ 
 tutes the chief distinction of American universities. 
 
 They overlook the fact that our high schools are not 
 “city schools” wholly given over to the affairs of the city. 
 They are schools of the people in the best and highest sense 
 of the term, willing and able to reflect all the major interests 
 of the people of their respective communities, and to denom¬ 
 inate as a “city school” 1 every school in a village of 2,000, and 
 therefore, as a school where agriculture presumably should 
 not be taught, is to say the least un-American. 
 
 They overlook the fact that to establish separate agri¬ 
 cultural schools of an inferior grade for country people 
 would fail to serve with the education best suited to their 
 need that large element of the country-born that is not 
 adapted to farm life. 
 
 They overlook the fact that the European system of edu¬ 
 cation was evolved after distinct social classes had been es¬ 
 tablished by generations of political and economic influences, 
 whose repetition in America it was the special purpose of our 
 Puritan forefathers to prevent. 
 
 They overlook the fact that in America the country peo- 
 
 1 See the so-called Davis Bill now before Congress, which bill aims to establish a 
 separate system of agricultural schools, limited in number, rather than that agriculture 
 should be taught in connection with other subjects in all high schools wherever a 
 country constituency exists. This proposed legislation is not only needlessly costly 
 but its inevitable consequence is to widen the breach between different classes and ulti¬ 
 mately to stratify society and to peasantize the American farmer. All this should not 
 be risked for a bit of federal aid which in its last analysis we pay ourselves. See Peoria 
 address, pp. 17-25. 
 
23 
 
 pie have not yet been peasantized, but that; so far we are a 
 homogeneous people except for immigration, which is a city 
 and not a country problem. 
 
 They overlook the fact that to educate farmers by them¬ 
 selves in separate schools almost purely technical and dis¬ 
 tinctly inferior both in breadth and intensity to the high 
 schools in which other classes are educated—that to do 
 this thing is to peasantize the farmers more rapidly and 
 more completely than they were ever peasantized in Europe 
 or than would be possible by any other method that could be 
 devised by the ingenuity of man. 
 
 They overlook the fact that to peasantize the schools 
 wherein farmers may be educated is to peasantize the farm¬ 
 ers themselves, the first effect of which is to put them out of 
 sympathy with other classes, and the other effect will be to 
 limit their very ability as occupants and managers of the 
 land, and their economic efficiency as farmers, after which 
 will be due and payable to men of all interests and all classes 
 the social and political consequences of this proposed educa¬ 
 tional sin. 
 
 They overlook the fact that this sort of educational phil¬ 
 osophy, extended to its conclusion, would demand that all 
 men be educated exclusively to vocational ends, each in their 
 separate schools, out of touch and out of sympathy with the 
 rights and ideals and ambitions of other classes, the only 
 final consequence of which is social chaos and political an¬ 
 archy, because if our people are once broken up into classes 
 according to occupation, they can never again be amalgamated. 
 
 They overlook what has been achieved in universities 
 wherein men of all conceivable purposes are educated both 
 separately and together in a common atmosphere of demo¬ 
 cratic wholesomeness. 
 
 This matter of the education of many men for many oc¬ 
 cupations but for one citizenship has settled itself and set¬ 
 tled itself right on college levels in very many of our states. 
 I congratulate you that in your state all these educational 
 purposes and achievements are brought together in a single 
 
24 
 
 institution. If you will carry the same ideal into your sec¬ 
 ondary schools, you will have a people with a common stock 
 of education and a common bond of sympathy, because the 
 different classes, having been educated together, will under¬ 
 stand each other. 
 
 I would have Americans so educated that in a company 
 you cannot tell by the dress, the language or the manner of 
 a man what his occupation is Your educational policy will 
 achieve all this, and by it you may handle this with no detri¬ 
 ment to business efficiency, but in the end, to its very great 
 advantage in every way. 
 
 Agricultural Development a Public Investment. 
 
 This development of American agriculture, until it shall 
 be profitable, productive and permanent and until the coun¬ 
 try shall be both comfortable and beautiful, and the people 
 educated—all this will cost money, stupendous amounts of it, 
 as we are accustomed to measure values in private life, for 
 it means a reorganization and very largely a redirection of 
 the lives, the purposes and the achievements of at least a 
 third of our great people. 
 
 If it were solely a matter of their own concern, we might 
 leave them to provide for this development or let matters 
 rest as they are. But in the last analysis the development 
 of agriculture is a -public question. The farmers are interest¬ 
 ed in it, of course, and for selfish reasons, but even if they 
 were not interested we should still insist for public reasons 
 that our agriculture should be developed to the utmost. The 
 farmers will reap the first advantages of such development, 
 to be sure, but they can realize no advantage that is not 
 shared with all interests of all people everywhere. 
 
 The farmers have developed the handicraft of farming, 
 or the art of agriculture, if you please, about as far as expe¬ 
 rience alone can take it. What is needed now is the study 
 and promulgation of the scientific principles involved in ag¬ 
 ricultural practice and in this field experience may correct 
 and help to shape up results, but it cannot originate. This 
 
25 
 
 is the great work of the Experiment Station, as is the educa¬ 
 tion in these principles the business of the College. 
 
 These institutions then stand in the very forefront of fur¬ 
 ther agricultural progress and the rate of this progress will 
 depend upon the amounts of money which the public is willing 
 to put into the effort, and the mutual inclination and ability 
 of the University and the farmers to go along together. In 
 Illinois these relations are now of the closest, and from now 
 on agricultural development is almost wholly a matter of 
 money. 
 
 Illinois has led in the amounts of money which she has 
 been willing to devote to the development of her agriculture. 
 New York has been a close second, and other states are 
 coming along. These amounts and their gradual growth are 
 shown in the following table together with the increase in 
 the faculty and the related increase in bona fide agricultural 
 students. 
 
 Year 
 
 Funds* 
 
 Faculty 
 College & 
 Station 
 
 Students 
 
 College 
 
 Station 
 
 Regist¬ 
 
 ered 
 
 Graduat¬ 
 
 ing 
 
 90 r 91 
 
 5000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 91-92 
 
 5000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 0 
 
 92-93 
 
 5000. 
 
 15,000-. 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 2 
 
 93-94 
 
 5000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 94-95 
 
 5000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 3 
 
 9 
 
 0 
 
 95-96 
 
 7000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 3 
 
 14 
 
 0 
 
 96-97 
 
 7000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 6 
 
 17 
 
 2 
 
 97-98 
 
 7000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 8 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 98-99 
 
 7000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 9 
 
 25 
 
 4 
 
 99-00 
 
 28,000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 16 
 
 90 
 
 2 
 
 00-01 
 
 28,000. 
 
 15,000. 
 
 17 
 
 159 
 
 4 
 
 01-02 
 
 34,000. 
 
 69,000. 
 
 23 
 
 232 
 
 4 
 
 02-03 
 
 34,000. 
 
 69,000. 
 
 27 
 
 284 
 
 9 
 
 03-04 
 
 90,000. 
 
 100,000. 
 
 37 
 
 339 
 
 10 
 
 04-05 
 
 90,000. 
 
 100,000. 
 
 37 
 
 406 
 
 18 
 
 05-06 
 
 91,000. 
 
 110,000. 
 
 44 
 
 430 
 
 24 
 
 06-07 
 
 91,000. 
 
 110,000. 
 
 50 
 
 462 
 
 43 
 
 07-08 
 
 102,000. 
 
 126,000. 
 
 61 
 
 528 
 
 38 
 
 08-09 
 
 104,500. 
 
 128,000. 
 
 63 
 
 est.550 
 
 est. 53 
 
 *From all sources, both state and federal- 
 
1891 
 Id 92 
 IS S3 
 
 1894 
 
 1895 
 /896 
 
 1897 
 
 1898 
 
 1899 
 
 1900 
 
 1901 
 
 1908 
 
 1903 
 
 1904 
 /90S 
 /906 
 1907 
 /908 
 
 1909 
 
 1910 
 
 1911 
 
27 
 
 It is evident that so far as research is concerned the 
 work done by the Station will be limited by the funds 
 available. On the College side the attendance is seen to 
 be in direct proportion to funds; moreover increased attend¬ 
 ance follows and does not precede increase of funds, as is 
 graphically shown in Figure 1. 
 
 This seems to be a worthy record but the amounts are 
 grossly insufficient to meet the demands that are now upon 
 the State University and that are increasing every day, as 
 shown by the attendance of students and by the correspond¬ 
 ence asking information which now amounts to approxi¬ 
 mately fifteen thousand letters a year. 
 
 The incompletness of these funds for present needs is 
 shown in the following list of amounts agreed upon by the 
 advisory committees of the farmers themselves to be asked 
 of the present legislature: 
 
 Annually 
 
 Biennua.lly 
 
 For Instruction (College).. .... 
 
 $ 70,000. 
 
 $140,000. 
 
 For Buildings (College and Station). 
 
 For Soil Investigations (Station). 
 
 100,000. 
 
 162,500. 
 
 200,000. 
 
 For Crop Investigations (Station). 
 
 30,000. 
 
 60,000. 
 
 For Live Stock Investigations (Station).... 
 
 70,000. 
 
 140,000. 
 
 102,300. 
 
 For Dairy Investigations (Station).. 
 
 51,150. 
 
 For Horticultural Investigations (Station). 
 
 40,000. 
 
 80,000. 
 
 For Floricultural Investigations (Station). 
 
 17,500. 
 
 35,000. 
 
 
 $378,650. 
 
 $919,800. 
 
 These amounts may seem large and in a sense they are 
 but not for its undertaking. Think first of what they can 
 accomplish for a commonwealth and what an agriculture it 
 can build up if such a policy is instituted and pursued. But 
 can a state endure such an expense? Again, all things are 
 relative. The largest of these amounts is for investigation 
 and their total is less than a cent an acre a year for Illinois 
 lands. Surely the results of experiments are worth many 
 times this amount aside from the fact that the increased earn- 
 
28 
 
 ing power of the state because of the work of the station has 
 already done more than pays all expenses of the station, the 
 whole university and of the normal schools besides. So we 
 are asking for no new money, only for a larger share of 
 what has already been earned. 
 
 It is significant, too, that while Chicago pays 40 percent 
 of the Illinois tax, she has never demurred at anything that 
 would build up the agriculture of the state in which the 
 prosperity of that great city so largely rests. Chicago is 
 not frightened by the size of a proposition, if only it pays in 
 the end. 
 
 Again these amounts are small when compared with the 
 perfectly stupendous outlays for charitable and worthy yet 
 non-productive purposes. The following table shows how 
 these amounts compare in Illinois for the current biennium. 
 
 Relative Amounts Devoted to Public Purposes. 
 
 Illinois —T wo-Y ears-1907-8 . 
 
 Productive 
 
 Agricultural Experiment Station 
 
 Agricultural College.... 
 
 Total Agricultural Education. .. 
 
 Universi ty. 
 
 Normal Schools (five) .. 
 
 $ 205,000—1 percent 
 125,000— i percent 
 330,000—1| percent 
 1,841,290—9 percent 
 941,974—4i percent 
 
 Total Educational 
 
 $3,113,264—15 percent 
 
 Non-productive 
 
 Insane. 
 
 Penal 
 
 Defective children 
 Other dependents. 
 
 $4,696,000—23-f-percent 
 2,329,100—12-j-percent 
 972,900—4i-fpercent 
 1,669,402— 8-fpercent 
 
 Total non-productive 
 
 $9,667,402—48+percent 
 
 This is more clearly comprehended when shown in the 
 graphic form as in the following chart, see Fig. 2. 
 
 By this we see that Illinois is putting into the develop¬ 
 ment of its agriculture less than half as much as into the 
 education and care of its defective children. By this we see 
 
Productive Non-Productive 
 
30 
 
 that our state university as a whole is not yet on a level with 
 our penal institutions: that is, that our penitentiaries are 
 now absorbing a larger share of the public resources than 
 are devoted to higher education and research in the univer¬ 
 sity and nearly as much as the university and five normal 
 schools combined.* 
 
 By this we see that Illinois could increase her endow¬ 
 ment for agriculture more than fifteen times and still devote 
 less to the development of this great industry than it costs 
 to care for her insane. By this we see, too, that 48 percent 
 of all our public outlay is for non-producing purposes. 
 
 Now the care of our dependents is a moral charge upon 
 us and I would not shirk it, but it produces nothing and con¬ 
 tributes nothing to development and I propose a new plan— 
 the Dollar for Dollar principle. I mean by this, that every 
 time we expend a dollar in charity for non-productive pur¬ 
 poses, we put down another dollar to develop the resources 
 of the state, t 
 
 I wish I could in some vivid way impress upon you the 
 enormous discrepancy in this respect at present and make 
 you understand and appreciate how exclusively, almost, our 
 public outlays are going into non-productive channels. If, 
 for example, we denote the amount expended in Illinois for 
 the College of Agriculture and for the work of the Experiment 
 Station by the distance from Boston to Buffalo then the 
 amounts devoted to the care of the defective children on the 
 same scale would reach from Boston to Salt Lake City: 
 those for our prisoners would pass the western coast line 
 and reach out into the Pacific and beyond the Hawaiian Is¬ 
 lands, while the expense of the insane on the same scale 
 would reach from Boston across our continent, across the 
 Pacific and into the heart of Mongolia in Central Asia; or if 
 we should go to the east it would land in almost the same 
 
 *It is significant in this connection that Michigan has spent almost equal amounts 
 of money since its admission to the Union on its great university and its penitentiary 
 at Jackson. 
 
 tSee Peoria Address—The Development of the Natural Resources of the State. 
 
 # 
 
31 
 
 spot, reaching, as it does, a little over half way round the 
 world. 
 
 If you combine all the expenditures for all non-produc¬ 
 tive dependents, it would reach around the world and over¬ 
 lap a thousand miles beside, against which our little dis¬ 
 tances from Boston to Buffalo as representing agriculture is 
 not even a respectable Sabbath day’s journey. 
 
 With comparisons such as these it is folly to say that a 
 state cannot afford the most liberal support of college and 
 station work. Charity is commendable and in every way 
 worthy but after all it is non-productive and money so ex¬ 
 pended is gone forever. Statesmanship dictates not only 
 charity, but development. 
 
 The farmers of Illinois produce every day of the year, 
 winter and summer, in sunshine or in rain, a million and a 
 half of dollars of new wealth. They propose this winter, 
 with legislative consent, to devote a little over a half day’s 
 work to this business of agricultural instruction and investi¬ 
 gation, looking to the further development of our greatest 
 producing industry. Yes, all things are relative, and it is 
 proportions and needs rather than magnitudes that we must 
 study. 
 
 Agricultural improvement, is enormously productive 
 and money expended in its development is money not ex¬ 
 pended but money invested, for the returns are both enor¬ 
 mous and perpetual. Every bushel added to the yield of Illi¬ 
 nois cornfields adds three million dollars to the income of the 
 state. Every disease and every insect and fungous enemy 
 which we learn to control saves enormous values to the coun¬ 
 try.* 
 
 Every contribution to our knowledge of soil manage¬ 
 ment is of direct public benefit as surely as are improved 
 methods of mining and every step towards a permanent agri¬ 
 culture is a step along the road that must be traveled before 
 we can talk about an assured future: 
 
 *Bitter rot alone took a million dollars’ worth of apples out of four counties of 
 Illinois without warning in 1902. 
 
32 
 
 Yes, in every way money expended for agricultural de¬ 
 velopment is not an outlay, it is money invested in the safest 
 bank on earth—the soil of the commonwealth and the people 
 on whom we must depend for its management and in whom 
 the balance of power will always rest. Cannot any state af¬ 
 ford to devote as much to its agriculture as to its prisoners? 
 Can it afford not to do it. 
 
 They cannot afford not to do it, first, because agricul¬ 
 ture needs it, and, second, because the development of our 
 producing industries and of the productive powers of the 
 people is the best protection against the crushing burden of 
 non-producing dependents as it is the best guaranty for the 
 future. I therefore close with the thought of dollar for dol¬ 
 lar: that is, a dollar for development against every dollar 
 needed for charity. As a corollary to this proposition and 
 in behalf of agriculture, I propose as a temporary policy 
 that as much be devoted to the development of our agricul¬ 
 ture as to the support of our penitentiaries. Surely we 
 would not be wise if we do less, and the askings of your ad¬ 
 visory committees is not only sane and safe but well within 
 not only the needs of the work but of what it is wise to 
 devote to agricultural development. Will you not endorse 
 these askings and demand their appropriation? 
 
 Illinois’ share of the federal appropriation to the Depart¬ 
 ment of Agriculture is now over a million dollars. Will 
 she not duplicate that for Illinois Agriculture? 
 
 I beg of you in the strongest terms to study these ques¬ 
 tions in all their meaning both now and in the future. And 
 when you see their full significance and real bearing, be out¬ 
 spoken and insistent that your commonwealth at once adopt 
 policies that shall put agriculture on a new basis both eco¬ 
 nomically and educationally. Ask it: urge it: plead for it: 
 demand it, for it is yours. 
 
 This is agricultural development and the meaning of it. 
 
 / 
 
Kfl 
 
 UNIVER9fTY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 082287332