Now gentlemen, remember that Dr. Worsham's telephone is 213, that I am representing the Mayor and Business Men's Association, and that we are perfectly delighted to have you with us. I hope you will have a good time. I thank you.
The President: Dr. Robert T. Morris will respond first to Dr. Worsham and afterwards Mr. Potter.
Dr. Morris: Mr. Chairman, Representatives of the Business Men's Association, Ladies and Gentlemen: In Chicago, I met an Englishman who told me he was going to "Hevansville." I did not know just where he meant but after hearing Dr. Worsham's speech, I understand.
This is no doubt one of the coming cities of the world. You have here the field that was fought for by the early settlers and the Indians, and the field that is to be the scene of many wars in days to come.
In the days to come, perhaps a thousand years from now, there may be four or five people to the acre living under conditions of intensive cultivation. This is just the sort of land that will support a population to the best advantage, and you have here conditions suitable for the crop that is to be the crop of the future. People do not fully utilize nature's resources until there is need for doing so. We have depended upon the cereals and the soft fruits and things of that sort, just as the early Indian depended upon the deer and the beaver. The time came when his beaver and his deer disappeared. We, like the Indian, take up first the development of simplest things in plant life. Later, under intensive cultivation, we shall be enabled to support a very much larger population on fewer acres.
We find that nuts contain starch and proteids in such proportion that they will fairly well take the place of meats and of other starches.
Now, this is not an opinion which is individual alone, but is the conclusion of authorities after examination of data. Chemical examination of nuts has been made by our Department of Agriculture at Washington and by chemists elsewhere. The nut crop, then, is to be perhaps the staple food crop for the people of the United States one thousand years from now, when we are depending upon methods of intensive cultivation for the annual plants.
It is true, of course, that three thousand years before Christ, the Emperor Yu developed in China a system of agriculture that is better than any European or American system today both as to production and transportation—perhaps including distribution. At the present time China is supporting a larger population to the acre than any other country.
All this comes to mind in response to the address of welcome by Dr. Worsham. Here at this point of our United States, there is already a center of the new movement for the development of the great future food supply of the world, a nut nursery center. Here we find also another feature of great consequence from the economic and politic side. We find honest nurserymen. That is a very important matter. As nations advance in culture the moral side develops, and as the ethical side develops there will be better representatives in the trades and in all callings. The nursery business is near to nature and for that reason simple people have assumed that nurserymen were nearly as white as snow. Those of us who have had some experience with them, know what it means to find honest ones. We deeply appreciate the fact that in this part of the country honest nurserymen are making a name for themselves and for America.
I know Evansville not only in this way that I have been speaking of but also in a professional way because of its doctors. There are two or three or four of the Evansville doctors—you do not know that as members of this Association, but I know it as a member of our great profession—who have placed Evansville upon the map. This city is best known throughout the United States in the medical profession because of some three or four Evansville doctors of the present and past.