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The Lure of the Land:

Farming after Fifty

     To the city man, even if his boyhood was spent in the country, farming is an unskilled profession.  In other words, anybody can be a farmer.  If a farmer should have a number of sons differing in mental capacity, he probably would take the one who had the gift of speech for the purpose of making of him a preacher or a lawyer, the one who believed in research might be a scientist or a physician, while the one who seemed to have no particular ability for anything would be selected to stay upon the farm.  If the facts of farming were properly appreciated, quite a diffferent attitude would be manifested.  The brightest and best of the boys by all means should be kept upon the farm.  It is a fundamental error to suppose that farming is neither a business nor a profession.  It is a business which requires the highest business talent, it is a profession which requires the best technical skill.  It is true that farming perhaps embraces a larger percentage of unskilled men than any other profession, but that is not the fault of farming itself.  There is no other profession that requires such a variety of learning, such an insight into nature, such skill of a technical kind in order to be successful, as the profession of farming.  That this is recognized as a fact may be easily shown by a few commonly recognized truths.
     All over the world schools of agriculture are multi-

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plying.  A hundred years ago there was no such thing as an agricultural school, the agricultural experiment station was unknown.  A lot of facts had been accumulated by experience, but these facts were not correlated nor put into any kind of a systematic form or shape.  The man without brains, provided he had hands and muscle, was considered the ideal farmer.  How much that has changed one needs only to look around him to see!

     That great statesman, Senator Morrill of Vermont, was one of the first of our public men to realize the importance of farming as a profession.  During the throes of the Civil War, when it was uncertain whether or not the nation would survive, Senator Morrill took the stand that he believed the nation would survive and in its survival would depend upon its agriculture for its wealth and progress.  In 1862 he saw enacted into law his bill introduced into Congress to establish agricultuaral colleges in all the States.  To this end he provided that the United States grant a portion of its public lands for this purpose.  In the older States there were no public lands, therefore he devised a scheme of opening the vast domain of the West not only to actual settlers, but also to preemption by the States.  A certain number of acres of land was set aside for each State, in proportion to the number of representatives and senators it had in Congress.  Thus the old States, such as New York and Massachusetts, would have the same opportunity to have the benefit of this great grant as the new States and territories where the lands were situated.

     When this proposal of Senator Morrill became a law, very little was thought of its value and brilliant future.  The States themselves were slow to appreciate it.  They

Agriculture a Learned Profession     13

came into possession of what was called land script, that is, orders on the public domain in any locality where preemption had not already taken place.  As it is possible to divide men into wise and foolish, so it was soon possible to divide the States into wise and foolish.  Some of the States, notably New York, located their land script and kept the land, which of course has increased immensely in value.  Others, and among them my own State, Indiana, sold their orders on the public domain at a fabulously low price.  Indiana had, in round numbers, nine hundred thousand acres of public land assigned to it for purposes of agricultural instruction, not excluding the mechanical arts and military tactics.  This vast amount of script was sold for less than four hundred thousand dollars, in other words less than fifty cents per acre.  What a mine of wealth the State would have possessed had it located its lands and kept them for leasing purposes!  Probably to-day the annual income of the State from this source would have been greater than the whole of the money received for the sale of the land.

     But in spite of the wastefulness with which these grants were handled, the purpose for which they were made has been realized.  In every State and territory of the Union to-day there is an agricultural school, which also teaches the mechanical arts and military tactics in harmony with the law of Congress, and these schools are all endowed, partially or fully, by the proceeds of the land given under the Morrill act.  In some States the fund has been divided, so that there is more than one college.  This is the case especially in some of the Southern States, where a college has been established both for whites and blacks.  It is difficult to estimate to-day the total income in the interest of

14     The Lure of the Land

agriculture and techincal education which arises from the benefits of the Morrill act.

     The States have also given additional sums for the support of these institutions.  Later additions were made to the grants of funds from the public treasury in the interest of agricultural education.  Among the first of these was the Hatch act, establishing particularly agricultural experiment stations.

     Wonderful as is this endowment, the greatest ever given to education by any nation or at any period of history, the progress of agricultural training has not been limited alone to the colleges and experiment stations.  Forty years ago the Farmers' Institute was almost unknown.  To-day hundereds of institutes are held throughout the whole country, in which the data relating to agricultural progress are presented and discussed.  I well remember my first appearance at a Farmers' Institute, now nearly forty years ago, as a young teacher of agricultural chemistry.  I was expected to tell the farmers something about the principles of fertility.  It was an embarrassing situation to me, having only lately come into this work and being so little acquainted with all of its ramifications.  Fortunately for my reputation, my audience knew even less than I.  The terms "phosphorus," "potash" and "nitrogen," were indeed Greek to the farmer as most of them were Greek in their etymology.  But at least there was an awakening among them.  It was the dawn of a new era in Agriculture.

     If we could only compare this primitive institute in Indiana with one of its modern descendants, what a contrast there would be!  From my point of view the institute was a great deal more of a school to me than it was to the farmers who came.  I realized then, at

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the beginning of my professional life, the magnificent problem of agricultural science, and although I have devoted much of my life to the study of that problem, I realize to-day how utterly unsolved it still is.

     Many years ago, when the scientific sun was just rising on the general farmer, I tried to put some of these ideas into rime.  My purpose was to portray, if possible, the ideas which were planted in the mind of the old farmer when he first attended the Farmers' Institute.  These rimes run as follows:

Farmer Johnson Relates His Impressions of the "Institoot."(1)

You seen the notice, William, of the meetin' up to town,
Of the farmers in the Institoot, they come from all aroun'.
There wuz Billy Woods from Haw Patch, and old Sam Mapes from Hope,
And Peter Hughes and Barney Flinn and Tecumseh Sherman Swope.

And half the town from Taylorsville, and you had orter seen
Judge Edgington a mixin' round amongst us playin' green.
And Lawyer Sims wuz also there, you see it seems ez how
He's up for the ligislatur and wants to larn to plow.

And the fellers from the College of Agricultur, they
Wuz thick ez lightning bugs in June and had a heap to say.
Ther wuz one they called a chemist, and he kind a seemed to know
All that wuz in the air above and in the ground below.

He sed we needed nitergin, and showed us how the stuff
Wuz awful high and skeerce for crops, while in the air enough
Wuz found to make us 'tarnal rich if we could only git
Some cheap and sarten projeck of hitchin' on to hit.

He sed that peas and clover and other crops like them,
Wuz jist the stuff to do it and store it in the stem,

(1) "Songs of Official Agricultural Chemists," Washington, 1890.

And the yearth is full of critters that eat this stuff you see,
And change it in a twinkle into ammoniee.

That arternoon the sheriff he as't us out to see
Some Jerseys in his pastur; the prof. he rode by me,
We crossed the crick at Haskell's and passed the clover field
Whar he hed wheat last summer with sich a bustin' yield.

The professor he wuz lookin' and when the field he spied,
"Them taters 're lookin' splendid fur the time o' year," he cried.
"Them ain't taters," said I, laffin'; "why, professor, don't you know
Thet's the clover which you told us would give us sich a show?"

Sence I come back from the Institoot it really appears
Thet potash, nitrate, phosphorus, wuz ringin' in my ears,
And, William, it seems purty tough thet you and Jim and me
Have went along so ign'rant of what we daily see.

Jist hauled manure out on the pints and plowed and hoed and mowed,
And worked so hard for little pay, and never, never knowed
Thet clover, peas, and beans, and sich ez the chemist mentioned there,
Hev the highly useful knack of suckin' niter from the air.

     Having retired now for several years from addressing farmers' institutes, I would be almost afraid again to attempt it, so wise and critical have the farmers become on all the points relating to the scientific exposition of the principles which underlie their profession.

     Not only have the farmers' institutes done this wonderful service, but they are not the only avenues of progress.  We have  now throughout the country agricultural trains passing rapidly from county to county, carrying a corps of learned and practical men, with coaches filled with exhibits and charts of instruction, thus bringing to the very doors of the farmer who is

[Illustration:  "The children will not get to college unless I should find a chance to sell"]
[Illustration:  "I pulled up an acre of peach orchard and sowed alfalfa"]

Agriculture a Learned Profession     17

unable to attend the agricultural college or visit the experiment station, the best fruits of their activities.

     Finally, there has come to the aid of the instruction in agriculture the moving pictures, showing the varieties of farm life and the methods of overcoming its mechanical difficulties, illustrating the tillage of the soil, the growth of the crops and the activities and peculiarities of farm animals, the wonderful intelligence and technique of the honey bee, and so on through the list.

     I doubt if there is any other branch of knowledge to-day which has a larger endowment, more competent corps of teachers, more enthusiastic pupils, than the great university of agriculture, which exists in all of the manifold forms which I have described throughout the length and breadth of the land.  The United States is by no means the only country in which it is recognized that farming is a learned profession.  In Europe and in the islands and continents of the seas, and even in Asia and Africa, the elucidation of the fundamental principles of agriculture is constantly carried on.  Professors and tutors and artists and mechanics and photographers and illustrators are carrying this new propaganda throughout the world.

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