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.
As a conservation congress for child welfare, we offer you, gentlemen,
our experience and our organization in any efforts which you may put
forth for the betterment of childhood whether in city or country.
(Applause)
President WALLACE—I take pleasure in introducing to you Congressman Fred
S. Jackson, former Attorney General of Kansas.
MR. JACKSON—As soils may be exhausted, it is even possible to exhaust the
conservation of soils—by discussion. We have listened to several papers,
each of which has been not only intensely interesting but exhaustive
on the subject of restoring and conserving exhausted soils. I may be
pardoned, therefore, in asking your attention to another great national
subject of conservation; that of conserving our lives and millions of
property from loss by fire. This subject has been already partially
discussed, before this Congress, through and by means of a report of the
National Board of Fire Underwriters, a national organization of fire
insurance companies.
This report, though good in the main, is one-sided. It calls attention
to the public duty of citizens in general in preventing fire losses. We
desire by means of a national investigation under national supervision
to remind insurance companies of certain of their own public duties,
relative to the causes of fire losses.
All agree that these losses are enormous and when compared with that of
any other country are excessive and abnormal. In the last decade the
amount of property insured has doubled and in spite of a campaign for
fire prevention by the insurance companies, fire losses have also doubled.
This disappointing result has led many of the best informed insurance
experts of the country to conclude that the real “bug under the chip” in
our fast increasing excessive and abnormal fire losses is the insurance
rate, for which our insurance companies are responsible.
I hold no brief in this matter against the insurance companies. I became
interested in the subject merely as a state officer in an attempt to
enforce state laws and to secure state supervision of rates in the
interest of the public. Such laws are now in force in at least four
states of the Union, and are sustained by our courts on the theory of the
state’s right to protect the life and property of the citizens against
loss from fire.
POWELL EVANS’ VIEWS.