Chapter X: Part 10

I believe in the conservation of the natural resources. I believe in the conservation of the coal and the forests. But conservation does not mean hoarding. It means utilization. I do not want to go through life with cold feet to save the Alaska coal and warm up somebody that is going to live a million years from now. (Applause) I want to get some of the benefit out of the coal while I am living, and out of the forest and out of the stream. My idea of conservation is to use the natural assets of this country for the benefit of the people, and not for some syndicate of rich men alone. (Applause) And I hope we won’t spend all this generation quarreling about who is going to have the coal, but that we will find some way to get it out and use it before it gets out of date. Because I want to tell you that we will not need coal much longer. The scientific men will find plenty of ways of finding heat and motive power when the coal is all gone. And if we do not use it now, it is going to become simply a specimen in the near future. (Applause) I want to say that we want to use the lumber, and use it wisely. There is no economy in allowing a tree to stand in the forest until it rots. We want to cut the old trees down just like Nature comes around and cuts down the old people and gets them out of the way. That is the way that science will provide lumber and at the same time continue to reduce the forests. Only the mineral resources are limited. There is just so much coal, just so much gold, and when they are used up, so far as I know, there is no more making, and they will be then gone. But do not have any fear. When the iron is all gone and the silver is all gone and the gold is all gone, there will be plenty of metals at the disposal of man, because we have found now how to convert clay into metal. I went into an automobile shop the other morning where they were making the frames out of pure aluminum. We have got enough clay in this country to last several years. (Applause) It will take the place of the steel and the iron and the gold and the silver and the copper. Have no fear of exhausting these supplies of humanity, but exhaust them for the benefit of the public. (Applause) If we could use one millionth part of the force of the wind we could turn every wheel of industry in the world, warm every house, cook every meal in this whole universe. And the wind and hot air shops are very abundant still. (Applause) There are no signs of it giving out in the near future, either. If the wind is going to blow and turn the wheels of commerce and industry, there are 24,000 wind mills with a dynamo attached to them and storage battery guaranteeing to the farmer all the light he wants in the barn, cooking stove, and turning the sewing machine and grindstone and engine every day of the year. Do not have any fear, ladies and gentlemen, that the natural powers of this world are going to be exhausted. They are here and here to stay, and here to be supplied by the advance of science in such a way that no matter how populous the world becomes in the future nobody is going to suffer for warmth or clothing or power in this world of ours, and we want to get so many people in this country that there won’t be any complaint of vacant country churches. And there is no doubt that this country can supply the food and clothing for untold millions of people yet unborn. We can have every foot of our country as densely populated as Belgium and still have plenty for everybody, because advancing science will supply it. The capacity of a man’s mouth is limited and constant, but the skill of his hands is unlimited. He has two hands, but only one mouth, and the advancing skill of his hand is going to fill the mouth.

President WALLACE—Turn around that way and face the audience, please. (Applause)

HEALTH, THE GREATEST ASSET.

Dr. WILEY—I would just as leave say it all over again if you didn’t hear it. (Laughter) Now, there is one public asset of wealth that is rarely mentioned in these conservation congresses, and that is the public health. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen (applause), it is worth in money more than all the gold and all the forests and all the water power combined. If a man boasts of the wealth of Kansas City he speaks of the railroads and the packing houses and the great centers of distribution and the wholesale commercial houses and the value of real estate. He never says a word about how much a people are worth in health. I asked the children in the Central High School today how much each one thought he was worth in money. They did not know. I told them that in a year or two every one of them would be capable of earning $50 a month. I think there are lots of parents in this town that would not take $12,000 for a single child they have. And every single child is worth in money, if it is developed into a man or woman, $12,000. And if you take all of the people of the country and value them at $12,000 apiece, all the rest of the wealth of this country sinks into insignificance. And I am satisfied that that is the value of every man who is able to earn a dollar.

Now, some people think women are worth nothing because they don’t get paid much for their work. Housewives do not get a monthly salary usually from their husbands. She ought to, but she does not. Practically all of them ought to get a salary every month. (Applause) But that does not make any difference in the earning capacity of the housewife. She is worth more than $50—every one. So I would say that there are 40,000,000 of people in this country who are capable of earning $50 a month and do earn it. That, in my mind, will give you a good idea of the wealth of this country in health. But that wealth consists of health. If you impair the machine, the human machine, you impair the earning power of that machine, and thus you diminish its value. If you let the child die you rob the father of a great asset. And we are letting our children die every year. You may go into any graveyard in this country and count the little graves of children under five years of age, and three out of every five of them ought not to be there. The little body that is crumbling beneath that tombstone ought to be in the high school of the city or in the active walks of life. We let these children die and never think of the responsibility that rests upon us. How can we get to be healthy? Well, in the first place heredity. We have got to begin away back. That don’t do us much good, but if we pay attention to it it will do future generations some good. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes I believe who said, “You have to begin to make a man when he was a marsupial possibility.” We have got to go way back now to shape the careers of men and women unborn. Heredity, a sound body is one of the rights of every human being who is born. (Applause) I am glad to know that many of the states are already taking steps to insure that, and to forbid marriages with people who are physically incapable of producing healthy children. Marriage we regard as a sentiment, and we do not like to have anybody interfere with our sentiments. But I tell you marriage is an affair of the state. If the state has a right to demand a fee for a marriage license, and to prescribe how it shall be performed, and make laws by which it may be broken, it has the right to forbid the marriage as well as to regulate it. (Applause)

CONSERVATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

I say then that our first work for public health is to look after the unborn generations and to see that they have healthy parents. That does not help us now, but we must look to it right now. I asked a member of the school board today if they had medical inspection of the school children here. He said a partial one. I said: “Do you have a dental inspection? Do you have a registered dentist come around through the school and see what kind of teeth the children have?” That is just as important as whether they come with clean clothes or not. I have no use for a boy or girl who loses his teeth in childhood. We must begin the conservation with the children of this country, of the public health. The time is coming when there will not be a school in our broad land without competent medical supervision. We demand now that our children be vaccinated. We also should demand that they bring to school no contagious disease to spread among their fellows. And there are lots of contagious diseases that we do not think of as contagious, such as tuberculosis for instance. And so by beginning with the unborn generation we may add to the length of human existence. Heredity then, sound bodies in which sound minds are and may be developed, is one of the primal basic qualifications for the conservation of human life.

Then the next thing is, after we get healthy beings into the world, to see that they are properly nourished, and unless the child and the man and the woman have the proper food they cannot be expected to maintain their health. Unless you feed an engine, or boiler, good coal you cannot expect it to develop the maximum of power. Unless you feed a man well, nourish him well, you cannot expect him to be an effective machine, and to do his proper duty as a member of the community. The thing to do to secure the maximum efficiency of the machine—feed it well. What are we doing about that? We are making a beginning in that line. And the first thing we are doing is with the young child. We are saving the lives of the infants. I may say there has been more progress made along that line than in any other, and that is the place to begin. Here a few years ago if 125 children did not die out of every thousand that were born we thought something was wrong; we rather expected it. And in some communities a great many more than that died.

In many communities the death rate has been reduced to seventy per thousand. There is no reason why over this whole country the death rate of the children, of the infants and the child under five, may not be reduced so as to make the death rate per thousand not very much greater than that of the adult, namely, thirteen or fourteen per thousand in a healthy community. And I do not know any reason why the children of this country should die at the rate of more than thirteen or fourteen per thousand when they are properly cared for at birth, and have proper fathers and mothers to give them healthy bodies. This will be a great addition to the wealth of the country, to save the children. And we can save the grown person by a wholesome diet. I am not one of those who believe in a starvation diet, cutting down food. There are a great many preachers of that doctrine in this country. That is a false doctrine. Nature provides that we shall have enough, and intended we shall have enough and then a little more. When the engineer fills up the tender with coal, he does not take just enough to get him into the station. No. He puts in a ton or two in excess. So Nature provides that when we eat to get strength to perform the mechanical functions of life, we shall have just a little more than is necessary, the factor of safety which enables us to go over the emergency safely.

THE RIGHT TO NUTRITIOUS FOOD.

And, therefore, it is the right of every citizen of this country to have nutritious food and to have plenty of it. Again, when the animal does feel sick, it has the right to scientific attendance with good food; in other words, the sick man has a right to be attended by a competent physician, and to have remedies administered prepared by a competent pharmacist and of pronounced purity. That is another thing we are securing for the people of this country—pure drugs to help them get well when they are sick. (Applause) And we are trying to keep men from practicing medicine who have no qualifications to do so except a facile pen to write an advertisement. The day is coming when a man cannot practice medicine in Kansas City by the newspaper as he can today. I looked at your newspapers. They are full of prescriptions, written by physicians who could not begin to pass the examination of your state board of health. They are quacks and fakirs, and the advertisements are worded cunningly to separate your money from your income. And the law permits it, while the regular physician cannot come to Kansas City and practice medicine without taking out a license from the state board of health, and yet you allow a fakir in any other county to come to town and practice medicine _ad libitum_. We are going to stop that for you and save your money and save your lives (applause) by securing competent medical supervision of the sick of the community.

Then we are going to protect you from contagious diseases. We are building up now a cordon around this country against invasion, not from an armed enemy, but from one that has slain a thousand times more than the armed enemy would slay—the germ of contagious disease. While Europe has been suffering from Asiatic cholera for a year, we have succeeded absolutely in wiping it out of this country, except one or two sporadic cases, and we no longer fear yellow fever. We know it because we know how to handle the mosquito that spreads it, and we segregate it in the spots where it breaks out. We are beginning to control that most dread of all diseases, tuberculosis. And the day is coming when we will have full control of it. There are people in this house who will live to see tuberculosis as rare as smallpox is today, in my opinion. (Applause) Why? Because science has found out how that disease is conveyed, and having found out the cause, we can proceed to the remedy, and the day is coming when there will be camps of detention for tuberculosis patients, just as there are today for leprosy. It looks hard. It looks inhuman. But what we must care for is humanity, and not the single life. You remember what Tennyson says: “Are God and Nature then at strife, that Nature sends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she signs, so careless of the single life?”

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY.

The individual must give way to the community, and if he is afflicted with tuberculosis he must be segregated, so that the disease may be conquered and kept within bounds. And so typhoid fever will be conquered—all the diseases which are due to infection and contagion. And great progress is making along this line today, so much so that we are encouraged in the belief that other diseases yet unconquered may meet the enemy and master, like for instance pneumonia and diseases of that sort. And the result will be that by the advance of scientific medicine and by the wise control of the state, men will be spared the destruction of their usefulness and value in middle life. Why, how much does it mean to die before your time? All the years of preparation, all the money spent in your education, all that you have done to prepare yourself for the duties of life, cut off in an instant by an enemy more treacherous by far than any foreign invader could be, more to be feared than any armed foe could possibly be feared. We have no need to build sixteen-inch guns to protect our trade on the Panama Canal. What we have protected are the men who builded them. The greatest triumph of the Panama Canal is not that it is a wonderful cut, is not that it is protected by sixteen-inch guns, but that the men who build it are as healthy as you people who have stayed here in Kansas City. That is the great triumph of the Panama Canal. (Applause)

Then we want to preach sanitation in the outplaces where the church ought to be built in the country. That is one reason that the country is not attractive, because there are no sanitary conveniences there. The farmers are living today in a state of barbarism almost in that respect. What we need to do is to populate the country in order to make the country attractive, and it can be done at little expense. There are preachers today who are preaching sanitation about the country school house, and to the country farmer, how to make himself comfortable at home. The roller towels have been abolished in Kansas. The Pullman Company has taken out its public drinking cups in the State of Illinois, and failed to give any other, so you can go all through Illinois without any danger of drinking the Pullman ice water. (Applause) The day will come some time when the Pullman Company will ventilate its cars. (Applause) On the train coming out from Washington there were at least five hundred free passengers called flies that came all the way and enjoyed the trip (laughter) and never lost a moment from sleep. (Laughter) Think of it at this modern day, to start a palace car from Washington that cost $20,000 full of flies! But we are preaching sanitation in out of the way places like the country home and the Pullman car, and the people are learning. And you will be able to travel after a while without danger of contracting a disease in the car where you sleep, or in the hotel where you eat. This gospel of sanitation goes with the gospel of the country church, because cleanliness is next to godliness, and sometimes it seems to me it comes first and godliness second, because a dirty man has a great deal of trouble in feeling godly. (Applause) So the gospel of sanitation is coming to our help. Another thing will help, and that is the gospel of segregation. What are we to do to prevent the influx into the city? I will tell you one thing that the city could do. Every city wants to have more people in it. They do not care what kind they are. They want more than their neighboring city. It is the ambition of the town to pad the census. Many of them are in jail for doing it today. If I lived in Kansas City I wouldn’t care whether we had more people than Omaha or not, but I would love to have, if I were in Kansas City, cleaner streets and purer water and more segregated houses (applause) than Omaha or any other city. And you ought to have them here with all your beautiful streets. You have the principle here of keeping the houses apart. There is plenty of ground in this country to build houses and have a little spot of green by them where they can have flowers in the garden and potatoes. That is what we ought to do to prevent the influx into the city.

THE CITY NOT FOR MANUFACTURING.

I would recommend as a sanitary measure that every city forbid any manufacturing of any kind within its limits. The city is not for manufacturing. The city is for exchange only, and if you would banish the factory you would do much for the sanitation of the city and for the factory workers. You would get closer to the raw material which the factory uses. You would save in transportation, and every workman could have his little cottage with his little piece of land that would help populate the country and help the church that was built near the factory, too. I say we can put the people into the country by legislation if in no other way in that respect, and the moment the factory starts the farmer is coming to raise garden truck. You will have growing around the factory a prosperous agricultural community with its church and it will be a great deal better than having a little church with a lonely graveyard. The most awful thing in the country is the graveyard, especially at night, when the boy has to go home past it. That is the way. We will segregate the population and thus conserve the public health.

Last of all, we can crown the work of the gospel of sanitation by enacting into a law provision for a national board of health with real power and with real authority, whose director shall have a seat in the President’s cabinet and advise him in regard to the most precious of all the assets of our country, public health (applause), and he can guide and help the authorities of the state and cities, and furnish them the material with which to work, and that is coming after a while. We are going to conquer and bring together all the government authorities which have to do with the public health in the one grand organization which will conserve the health of this country and have a voice of power in the councils of the Nation. And then when we do this we will have instilled into the people the idea that there are things that are more important than dollars. Every movement of this kind is stopped by the dollars, the fear that somebody is going to lose some money, while at the same time it could be easily shown that every single movement of this kind is for the increase of our national wealth, and the day will come when the doctrine of graft and greed will have to give way to the doctrine of the sanitation of the people. (Applause) We have today our Fourth of July when we celebrate. In some parts of the country the colored citizens meet and celebrate the emancipation. So I want to live to see the day when the people of this country will meet together in one grand convocation to celebrate the emancipation from the reign of greed and graft and for the establishment of the principles of sanitation which keep them well and happy and patriotic American citizens. (Applause)

President WALLACE—This Congress will now stand adjourned until tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.

_SEVENTH SESSION._

Dr. Cyrus Northrop, President Emeritus Minnesota University, presided.

Chairman NORTHROP—The Congress will be led in prayer by the Rev. Dr. S. M. Neel, pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church of Kansas City.

INVOCATION.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, we recognize Thy hand in every
good. We are dependent upon the bounties of Thy providence, and
we invoke Thy blessing upon these Thy servants, as they have
met together to consider the best interests that manifest Thy
love and Thy goodness to the children of men. Thou hast taught
us if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth
liberally unto all men and upbraideth not. We pray Thee that
Thou wilt give us wisdom to guide us in this Congress, that
we advise those ways and means that shall be productive of
the interests of our fellow men in their various avocations,
especially to those who are called to labor and till the soil,
and may Thy blessing rest upon them and Thy providence be about
us, sending the rain and the sunshine in season, and that men
may look up to Thee with thankful, grateful hearts, and serve
Thee honestly and sincerely, and finally meet Thee in richest
reward in the world to come, and the glory shall be Thine
forever, Amen.

Chairman NORTHROP—My instructions were to start the Congress at 9 o’clock, but it did not seem possible to do that. So I have compromised by starting it half way between 9 and 9:30. The regular order of business probably cannot be pursued at this moment. Is Mr. George W. Bailey of Missouri in the room?

If Mr. Bailey will come to the platform he may have the ear of the Congress for five minutes. Mr. Bailey, Deputy State Game and Fish Commissioner of Missouri.

Mr. BAILEY—I was highly pleased with the remarks of the gentleman Monday evening from New York on the conservation of wild life in that state, and again yesterday we enjoyed another treat from a gentleman representing the Audubon Society of the Empire State.

The protection of song and insectivorous birds in this rich agricultural land of the Middle West deserves more than a passing notice from this great Congress.

That the destruction of song and insectivorous birds means the increase of pests, so destructive to fruit and grain crops, is acknowledged by the best informed farmers of the day. And what a great pleasure it was to hear reports like those from the gentlemen representing the State of New York.

Here in Missouri we have had some trouble in getting the attention of farmers to this important subject, but they are beginning to realize that the insect-destroying bird is one of the best assets to the farmer.

The present Game Department of Missouri has never cost the tax payers of the state one penny, but the revenue for the protection of game is obtained from hunters’ licenses, paid into the State Treasurer’s office.

In North Central Missouri I have organized districts in several counties for the protection of prairie chicken and quail, and in these localities the farmers refuse to permit the destruction of these birds out of season, and we have now more than fifteen hundred prairie chickens absolutely protected, and the farmers will remember that in many neighborhoods of the state during the past season the grasshoppers were very destructive to late corn, and, as a proof of the usefulness of the wild birds, there was no complaint of the grasshoppers from the farmers in the localities where the prairie chicken, quail and other insectivorous and song birds are so well protected.

Through the efforts of our efficient Game and Fish Commissioner, Hon. Jesse A. Tolerton, the Chinese pheasant has been introduced in many counties of Missouri, and has proven a very great destroyer of insects, and especially so to the hated potato bug.

Some time ago I read an article in the Dallas News saying that the boll weevil had cost the State of Texas $20,000,000 in the last few years, and the editor called attention to the fact that the boll weevil never appeared until after the target gun in the hands of the vicious and ignorant had so wantonly destroyed wild bird life in that state.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a startling statement, but true, and what an object lesson for the great subject of bird conservation.

Chairman NORTHROP—In the absence of the gentlemen who were upon the regular program, will you indulge me for a moment or two while I say something? In the papers in the South there has been for some time special notice of the fact that a few years ago a small cotton crop yielded to the cotton planter $240,000,000 more than the larger cotton crop which succeeded, and the lesson sought to be taught is that the products shall be kept down as low as is necessary to secure the highest prices, and to that end if a large amount of cotton has been raised a considerable portion shall be kept out of the market until the prices rise to fifteen cents a pound, and then brought forward as fast as the market will take it. There is some disposition among the wheat farmers to keep back their wheat until the market is high enough to enable them to get the best prices. There is nothing wrong in the farmer doing that, and securing the best price he can, because the cotton and the wheat are not ultimately lost. At some time or other they come into human use. But there is another department in which the same process does not meet with the same results. I refer to that most important and, as it seems to me, growing important department, fruits of all kinds in the United States. We talk about the high price of living, and the price is high. Anything which will relieve the demand upon the most common necessaries of life will tend to lower the cost of living. Anything that we can introduce and make a common article of food for a large portion of the people to take the place of beefsteak is a blessing to the country, and we are receiving into this country hundreds of thousands of immigrants at the present time, many of them—perhaps most of them—coming from countries where the practice is to live largely on fruits—the Italians and others. Now, you are conserving the resources of the country, and how are we conserving our resources in the matter of fruits? Why, there are millions of dollars’ worth of fruits that are permitted to perish every year in order that the price of fruit may be kept up to a certain grade all over the country, and the consequence is that this million dollars worth of fruit that might feed the people, or might take the place of some other more important food in some way, is all lost to the country. What is the use of conserving the fertility of the soil if we are going to have our soil so fertile that we can raise $50,000,000 worth of fruit and let $40,000,000 perish, in order that for the ten millions we might get the price of the forty millions? Some way ought to be provided by which the fruit that is raised in this country shall be made available for food. I do not ask that anything will be done that will interfere with the prosperity of the fruit raiser. But that he shall raise a large amount of fruit and then have it made impossible to put upon the market more than a quarter of his product, and have that fruit maintain in price the same standard that the whole of it would, is a wrong, it seems to me, to the people of this country, and a detriment to its welfare. What we want is to feed people comfortably and at the lowest rate that is consistent with existing conditions.

There is nothing that would contribute more to the health of our people in a large way than increasing to a very considerable extent the use of fruit. So many persons use things that are not really advantageous to health. Fruit would be invaluable, and we are raising millions of bushels of apples and kindred things that never come to the use of man, but are permitted to perish. The same is true of peaches in many cases, and with cherries in some states. It is remarkably true of apples. Those states on the Pacific Coast, Washington and Oregon, and the region round about there, are raising apples that are astonishing in quantity and quality, and they are preparing to produce a great many more. It will be of the greatest value to the people of this country if we can get them. Twenty years ago it was doubtful whether Minnesota could ever raise apples. We have apples by the thousands of bushels this year all around Minnesota.

Notwithstanding, green apples in the market when I left home were $1.50 a bushel. That is not necessary. It ought to be so that the laborer, the man who works with his hands, can have fruit. God has given us a country that will yield almost everything. It will yield fruit in tremendous quantities, and the people will eat it if they can get it. What is the trouble? Why should three-fourths of the crop rot on the ground, while only one-fourth gets to market and brings the price that the whole should command? You see my point. It is not to interfere with the man who raises apples. I want him to get his full reward. But it is that this magnificent product with which God has favored us shall be utilized for the needs of this country, for their good, and for the removal of the stress in the demand for various other products, which are now at a price that is not within the reach of many people. We are met for the interests of people in general, for the good of mankind. No man liveth to himself; no man dieth to himself. If there is not grass enough and food enough to keep alive the cattle of the country, and a man has a thousand tons of hay, do you think he has the right to burn up 999 tons, and then ask for the remaining ton the price of the thousand? Has a man a right to destroy what is necessary for the lives of his fellow men, when it is needed for those lives (cries of “no!”) simply in order that by having only a part he may get the reward of the whole? I say no. We have to look for something besides ourselves.

It is not merely a matter of how much money goes into my pocket and how little comes out. It is a matter of whether I am doing my part in this world to make the world what it ought to be, and my fellow man just as comfortable and happy as I can. (Applause) (Good!) I have got to do it whether I am a farmer or anybody else. We have to so use what we have that it may benefit others as well as ourselves. I am not proposing any plan. I do not know what plan should be proposed. But, ladies and gentlemen, what I want is to see the products of the earth utilized for the support of men and women and children. And I want some way to be provided by which the magnificent products of our orchards may be carried all over the country, and the people may eat and enjoy them and live, and the returns to the producer of that fruit be all that they could ask. Can you help to secure this result in some way in the coming years? It is not secured as it ought to be at the present time. (Applause)

I resign the chair to President Wallace.

President WALLACE—I am very much obliged to Mr. Northrop for taking charge of the meeting in my absence. I have been down to meet Mr. Bryan. (Applause) I have persuaded him to put off his speech until 8 o’clock this evening. (Applause) Mr. Bryan will talk on a subject entirely in harmony with the spirit and purpose of this convention.

Delegate A. W. STUBBS—I have talked with a number of delegates from the country and understand that many of them have made arrangements to leave the city before 8 o’clock this evening, and I know it would be exceedingly gratifying to them to have Mr. Bryan here for a few moments some time. Do you suppose that could be arranged?

President WALLACE—Yes, sir; he will be here and you can get to see him.

Delegate STUBBS—We want to hear him.

President WALLACE—You may have a chance to hear him. We have a strong program; we keep the best to the last (applause), but we want you to assist us in putting through this program so that every man who comes here and says something can be heard. We will appreciate it, and push it through and just as fast as we can. Now, let me ask whether Mr. Curtis Hill is present? He is to address us on good roads. He is the State Highway Engineer of Missouri. What other matters have we to come before the Congress? The next speaker is Mr. White. He is not here, but he will be here in a little while. We will take up the call of the states. We do not care about resources or coal mines, but we want to know what you have done in your state for conservation, and what you intend to do, dead earnest, honor bright, what you intend to do.

Recording Secretary GIPE—Oregon (no response); Texas; Utah; Vermont; Virginia; West Virginia; Wisconsin; Wyoming. We have a request, Mr. President, from the chairman of the Arkansas delegation to be heard. They were not here when their names were called.

President WALLACE—I take pleasure in introducing to you Mr. F. M. Filson, president Missouri State Association of Assistant Postmasters, who will talk to you for five minutes.

[Mr. Filson’s paper is in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—Gentlemen: One reason for bringing this meeting to Kansas City was that we might get the voice from the South. Mr. Knapp, who has charge of the demonstration work in the South, was to be here, but cannot come because of illness, and his place will be taken by Professor W. J. Spillman of the Department of Agriculture, who will talk to you about fifteen or twenty minutes. Professor Spillman is engaged in the same work.

PROF. SPILLMAN—I regret very much that Dr. Knapp could not be here himself.

He is in charge of the farmers’ coöperative demonstration work in the South. It has been suggested that I take his place upon the program. I cannot tell you of his work. The Secretary of Agriculture has asked me to develop similar line of work in the Northern states, and we are now laying plans for its development. I want to discuss a few of the problems that strike me very forcibly in my study of agriculture in this country.

Several years ago I spent two weeks in visiting the more successful farmers in the New England states. I visited ten farmers in that two weeks, and made a careful study of their methods. I want to say that while we usually speak of the worked-out, bleak hills of New England, that I found as good farming there on a few farms as I have found anywhere in the United States. And one thing which struck me very forcibly, indeed, was that the oldest boy or young man I saw on any of those ten farms was fifteen years old, and the youngest man I saw was forty years old. A short time after that I had the pleasure of addressing the Vermont State Dairymen’s Association. There were a thousand farmers there, and in that assembly there were six who were under forty years of age. I asked those people where their young men and older boys were. They said they had gone to the city. Why have they gone to the city? Because they think they can better their condition there. Is that true? “Well, we suppose it is. Most of them are doing better in the city than they did on the farm.” I said, “They are wise boys then, to go where they can do better.” I would advise anybody to do that. The statistics of agriculture in the New England states show that between 1880 and 1900, a twenty-year period, there was a decrease of 30.1 per cent in the area of improved farm land, in New England, a decrease of one-third practically. During the period of 1890 to 1900, there was a decrease of 10 per cent in the rural population in New England as a whole. Since that time there has been a decrease in the rural population of practically all of the states north of the cotton belt and east of the great plains.

SOME STARTLING CONDITIONS.

During the last ten years there was a heavy decrease in the rural population of the state of Missouri, which I claim as my birthplace. Why is that? There are several reasons. One is that farmers are using more farm machinery today than they used to use, and they do not need as many men to man the farms as they formerly needed. Another reason is, many of the farms are not as well managed now as they were before because of the scarcity of labor, and they are not so profitable. But on the whole farms are more profitable now than they were ten years ago. There has been a ten per cent increase in the yield of farm crops in the United States in the last ten years. These conditions have brought about a movement which we have heard a great deal of in the papers recently, the back to the farm movement. Now, I am a farmer myself. I own a beautiful little farm down in the southwest corner of this state. I expect to be there next week picking my seed corn, and I am in full sympathy with every effort to develop agriculture and to improve the lot of the farmer, but I am not in sympathy with the efforts to make a wholesale migration of city people to the farm. I do not believe that is the solution of the question. In the first place we have on the farms of this country already children growing up who are getting the proper training to be farmers, aside from the schools they go to. Unfortunately our country schools teach them everything except farming. And as far as the farm experience is concerned those are the people who ought to be our farmers of the future. The city man has too much to learn. It takes too long to get adjusted when he goes to the land. We have recently made a careful study of several hundred city men who have gone out to settle on ten and twenty-acre farm tracts. And I want to say unreservedly that these men have made failures as farmers, and practically every one of them has his farm for sale at less than he paid for it. There are a few exceptions to that, but they are mighty few. I believe the solution of the problem of populating our farms is to keep a proper proportion of our farm boys and girls on the farm. (Applause)

I wouldn’t keep all of them on the farm. Why? Because they are not needed there. If they were all kept on the farm, in a short while there would be overproduction in agricultural products in this country. I want to see enough of them, and some of the very best of them, kept to man the farms in this country, and at the same time I want to see a small proportion, the proper proportion of those young men do what they have always done, go to the city and take the lead in every line of human activity. (Applause) I one time made the assertion before a body of scientists that there was something in the life of the farm that had a higher pedagogical value, higher educational value than the best city schools had to give. (Applause) I was called down hard for that statement, by a city scientist. Then I went to work to find out whether I was correct. I looked up the history of the Presidents of the United States, and I found that 92 per cent of them were born and raised on the farm; there are only 36 per cent of our population live on the farm—a little more than their share of presidents. Then I wrote letters to the governors of every state in this Union asking them if they were brought up on the farm; 91.4 per cent of them wrote back and said that they were farmer boys. Why is it that farmer boys become governors? It is because of something in their early training. We know it cannot be the country school, because that is a thing to speak of with a blush, generally speaking. What is it then? I asked those men. I said, “If the country life is advantageous to the growing boy, tell me why you think it is.” President Lucien Tuttle, of the Boston & Maine Railway, New England, gave me this answer—(which seemed to be the answer that most of them gave)—“When I was a boy on the farm by the time I was 12 years of age I was buying and selling cattle and feeding stock and taking care of them. I learned a sense of responsibility, and I never forgot it.”

I believe that the opportunity of putting responsibility on the farm boy is the most important feature of his education. I am confident that is correct. (Applause) We want a proper proportion of the farm boys and farm girls to remain on the farm and become farmers that are a credit to the Nation.

THE INCREASE IN LAND VALUES.

Let me tell you another reason why I want that rather than see city people go to the land. Land is going to become high-priced in this country in the very near future. The value of the land in the United States in the last ten years increased from twenty billion dollars to forty billion dollars. What made that? Was it increase in income from the land? No. Was it increase in the intrinsic value of that land for farming purposes? No. It was increase in the demand and decrease in the supply of free land. That is what did it. We only have to go across the Atlantic ocean to find farm land selling at from two to six hundred dollars an acre. Why? Because it is comparatively limited. There is no free land for sale. As long as a man could homestead 160 acres of good land in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, no farm land in America could be worth more than $100 per acre. But that day has past. We are now to have high-priced land. I want to see the boys who inherit that land live on it and run it. (Applause) I would much rather see that than to see the boy who owns that farm, or will own it, go to the city and become a street car driver and rent his farm to some fellow who will become a tenant. I want to see the American farms, so far as possible, peopled by those who own the land, who can hold up their heads and look any man in the face and say, “I am a landed proprietor, a free born citizen in a free land,” a thing which the tenant farmer can’t always do.

A Delegate—How to keep the boys on the farm is what we want to know.

Prof. SPILLMAN—That is what I was coming to in just a minute. Let me tell you what I have to say on that subject. There are lots of men in this audience that have left the farm. Why did you leave it? Because you thought you could do better, didn’t you?

A Delegate—Exactly.

Prof. SPILLMAN—That is it. Now, let us face the thing as it is. You left the farm because you thought you could do better elsewhere. Now, there is only one way to keep a sensible young man on the farm. You can keep a blockhead there perhaps some other way, but a sensible young man can be kept there in only one way, and that is to make it advantageous for him to stay there. You insult his intelligence when you ask him to stay at a disadvantage. (Applause) How are we going to make it advantageous for that boy to stay there? Well, I think I know how that can be done. We have tremendous agencies in this country at work learning how farming ought to be done. We have agricultural colleges, teaching young men, but one thing I want to impress upon you is that in order for the agricultural college to reach and affect every farmer in America, it would be necessary to graduate every year in agriculture alone 4,000 men in every college in the country. You know that they cannot reach that, and the function of the agricultural college is to prepare leaders and teachers and as many farmers as possible, but not all farmers.

The agricultural college of Kansas cannot graduate 4,000 men a year in agriculture. Kansas is a pretty liberal state in the matter of education, but I do not think she would want to go into her pocket deep enough to provide educational facilities at Manhattan for that many men. I would like to see her do it, but I do not think she can. Now, we must reach the farmer in other ways. These institutions have learned a tremendous amount. They have discovered the principles in fertilization of the soil; they have worked out thoroughly the principles of feeding live stock, so that today it is practically reduced to an exact science. They have worked out methods of selecting seed corn. How many farmers in Missouri plant carefully prepared seed corn? You ought to do it. I have just two minutes to tell you the gist of the scheme.

The President of the United States the other night told you that he was willing to approve the appropriation of a million dollars to begin a work of carrying to the farmer what the scientists already know. Let me add to that, that some of the most important work these men are to do will be to carry to those farmers what that farmer knows. I know farmers at whose feet I would be willing to sit for weeks, and I have done so, and I have learned more from the men whose farms I have studied than I ever learned from anybody else. But those men had worked out the methods of putting into practice what the agricultural scientist knows. We propose to put in every county in the United States a man to carry on an investigation of the work of the successful farmers and find out how they do it. A man who will investigate local agricultural problems and become an agricultural adviser of the farmers in these counties. (Applause) We are going to take the best men we can get. Most of them will be men who cannot afford to take the positions, men who are already making more than $1,500 or $2,000 a year on their own farms. Most of them will be young men, and the others, who, if they were a little older, would be doing the same thing. Now, my time is up, and I just want to add in ten seconds that we propose to join the state and the county and all divide the expense of establishing this system all over the United States for you.

President WALLACE—I will now introduce to you, and it gives me great pleasure, Mrs. E. R. Weeks of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent Teachers’ Association, who will speak to you for five minutes only. (Applause)

Mrs. WEEKS—I told you to make it three minutes.

The National Congress of Mothers reports here, not because it has a committee on conservation, but because it is an association organized for conservation, the conservation of the home and the child.

When we gave the call for our first convention in 1897 a whirlwind of protest swept over the land, that mothers should be called from their homes and children to attend a convention, and the press, from one end of the land to the other, ridiculed us as a lot of old maids and childless married women.

Today the press is our best friend, and we have taught the world that a mother can not live for her home and children in the best way unless she takes into her thought and work all other homes and children. The wives and daughters of the land have learned through us that a woman’s duty lies along the avenues by which she may bring into the home the best from the outside world. We conserve the home and child by our work in promoting the creation of juvenile courts, both in this country and abroad, and by sending to this convention as delegates our chairman of that committee, Judge Benjamin Lindsey. We organize parents’ and teachers’ meetings in city and rural schools, and to make these meetings possible we have a committee on good roads for country children’s welfare.