Part 22

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.