Agricultural colleges have not rendered the assistance that they should in extending agricultural education, because their field has been too restricted. Excellent as their instruction may be, it reaches only a very small percentage of our people directly. Their scope and activities must be enlarged till their influence is felt in every community. They should not be shut out from participating in the work of general education as they now are in many instances. In a measure we repudiate the findings of science, and discount the progress we have made, in not providing a wider application for our researches. There is at present no adequate means for the dissemination of the vast body of knowledge that alone will save to us our own great underlying industry of agriculture.
The world has oftentimes tried the experiment of building a State upon other foundations than that of a conservative agriculture and an intelligent and prosperous agricultural class, and always with the same fatal outcome. The grandeur of cities, the glory and might of great armies, the highest culture in the arts, and the noblest of religions and philosophies, will not suffice to save the nation that knows not nature and defies her laws. That State but hastens the day of its own destruction that fails to train its citizens in the right use and management of their land holdings. No jealous interest of whatever worth in itself should be given consideration at the expense of that which maintains all of our interests.
North Dakota has been favored by nature with a soil so productive that, properly tilled and conserved, it will feed one-tenth of the present population of the entire Nation. It is an asset such as few nations ever possessed, and it should be so safeguarded that its great contribution to the Nation's existence may steadily increase. The one way to do this is to teach the land owners that Conservation in agriculture means not only patriotism and good citizenship but prosperity as well, that useful education at any price is always cheap and ignorance costly, and that no values can be more stable and certain than those lying in productive farm lands.
The patriotic sentiment that leads men to sacrifice time and money that our natural resources may be conserved is most commendable. Of still more service is he who aids in developing a system of education that shall teach men to conserve the natural resources entrusted to their own hands. The task is a great one, but not beyond the range of possibility; and upon its successful accomplishment rests the welfare of the whole Nation.
REPORT FROM OHIO
William R. Lazenby
Ohio State University
Chairman Executive Committee of the Society for Horticultural Science
The welfare of our country, as well as that of the States composing it, depends on a wise Conservation of its rich and varied natural resources. Many of these resources have been so bountiful, and apparently so inexhaustible, that we have drawn upon them without a thought of their limitations of the dire effects of their exhaustion.
Speaking especially for Ohio, I trust it will be understood that by "Conservation" I mean an honest effort to make that State a good one to live in for all of us now there, and for all who may come after us.
In addition to the three problems named below, other Conservation questions will doubtless require attention; but for these, every instinct of justice and humanity insists that we accord them instant and earnest consideration.
1—The Forestry Problem