who worked the stubborn glebe was a surf, and until the discovery of America nobody had ever heard of an Irish potato. In Palestine and some portions of Mexico they still use a three-pronged limb as a plow to tickle the face of Nature about three inches deep. For a good many thousand years grain was cut with a sickle. Then some inventive genius invented a scythe, then subsequently a cradle, and the scythe and cradle were the only implements with which to attack a hay field or a grain field until a Yankee invented a mowing machine. After that came the reaper, then the reaper and binder, and finally the combined harvester. The mole-board plow, which would turn upside down eight to ten inches of the surface of the ground, was likewise invented by a Yankee, and all these great inventions date no longer back than the lives of many living men. Today the progress of the invention of agricultural implements is apace with any other line of invention.

Let us now examine the progress of agricultural science. When I was a boy, and that isn't going back anywhere near to the dark ages, but only about 30 or 35 years ago, there wasn't an agricultural experiment station in America, and I question if there was a college in America that had an agricultural course in its curriculum. Botany was thought to typify all that was respectable in agriculture. If anybody had mentioned that agriculture was a science, he would have been properly hooted. True, the Department of Agriculture used to get out an annual report in those days, full of cuts and drawings of agricultural implements and machines, and had a little something in about crops and fertilizers. It was good, so far as it went. But it didn't go very far. Agriculture made its real start as a science when Congress, about 30 years ago, passed an Act establishing agricultural experimental stations and endowing agricultural colleges in connection with state universities.

We measure progress by comparing one epoch with another. As we haven't time, today, to trace the successive steps in the development of agriculture these 30 years to its remarkable status as an art and as a science today, I will leave you to do that at your leisure. But I will throw in this suggestion, and you can agree with it or disagree to it as you choose. Even the great work of our agricultural experiment stations and colleges could not have accomplished such a revolution in farming in so short a while, if another factor had not operated in its favor. It is a psychological fact that the average man who is overworked deteriorates in capacity to get out of any rut in which he may be; in other words, overwork and worry causes him to lose his initiative to discover or take advantage of opportunity. In the economic equation, if we let X represent the normal ability of the average man under normal conditions, then under economic pressure his ability will be minus X, and under prosperity his ability will be plus X.

From about the beginning of time until some ten or fifteen years ago, the average farmer was in the minus X class. But about the beginning of the present century, when the price of farm crops started on the upgrade, economic pressure began to ease up on him; he didn't find it necessary to work so hard, care disappeared, hope took its place; he had leisure to exercise his brain, and his capacity to get out of bad ruts and take advantage of opportunity speedily got into the plus X class and has been there ever since. In a nutshell, prosperity, arising from the disturbance of the natural equilibrium between food producers and consumers, happened to occur just at the opportune time to make the farmer receptive, instead of negative, to the message which the agricultural experiment stations and colleges had to teach. And that message was scientific farming.

So, quietly and without any ado, a new era in the most fundamental pursuit of man came into being, and until Nature had given us the hint with a good deal of persistence and we had got on the housetop and climbed the skyscraper to squint over the landscape to see what the farmer was doing, we hadn't noticed or heard of it.

Scientific farming-what is it? It is doubling or quadrupling the productiveness of the soil by fertilizing it with the best kind of highly cultivated brains. It is exercising the best kind of scientific knowledge in choosing what to plant under given conditions; when to plant it, how to cultivate it, and when to harvest it. Finally, it is the bringing into play of foresight, hindsight, business calculation and business acumen to eliminate waste in growing and marketing and in getting the top price in the market. That is only a small-an infinitesimal part of what scientific farming is. It calls into play a greater variety of faculties than any other half dozen of the other professions. I may say here with

all seriousness that if one of you young men should come to me on the side and ask for my advice as to what profession to choose, if you were just an average sort of a young man, I might advise you to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a banker, or a civil or mechanical engineer-but if you were smart enough, a whole lot keener than the average, then I'd urge you to be a scientific farmer. Nay, I'd insist.

Don't make the blunder in thinking that modern farming isn't putting out the call for the best intellects in your generation! It is, and you are making a mistake, many of you, if you fail to heed the call. The days of Reuben and Farmer Corntossel are no more. You who have the ability and choose that profession, who by education fit yourselves for it, are the coming elect in this country, the envied of all men of the future. It is a profession which is not overcrowded and impossible of being over-crowded in yours or my time. From the day you enter it, you are independent. Your success will not be won by any competition which crushes the weak or injures your neighbor, but will be with Nature to wrest from her what she will delight in giving.

I venture the assertion that $2,000 per year is more than the average income of the average professional man in America; lawyers, doctors, dentists, engineers, etc. Also that the average business man the country over doesn't annually net any more than that sum from his business. As I am addressing young men, all of whom, very naturally, anticipate more than average success. I am going to state that after ten years' struggle it is quite a successful man in any profession who can feel assured of an income from his profession of $3,600 per year-a more than ordinarily successful man.

Now, a scientifically educated farmer who applies to farming a similar grade of ability to that of the successful professional man, can produce that income from 80 acres of alfalfa, growing six tons to the acre and selling it at $7.50 per ton. Or he will make that income off of 30 acres of alfalfa, turning it into hogs. Or he will make that income off of 60 acres of sugar beets. If he specialize on fruit, celery or lettuce, he will make that income off of 10 acres at the outside. Or if he grow potatoes he will get that income from 20 acres. More over, the young agriculturist graduate, if he be without means, can start in business as a leaser of land, make his own way and in five years clear enough money to own his own land and beat the professional graduate by five years at least in getting the same income. That sounds well, doesn't it? It is one of those things, born of recent economic changes, for which the proof to substantiate it is ample.

There is one thing more I want to mention before leaving the subject. A while ago I stated that this was the age of superlative efficiency. This is the age, also, of specilaizing. We are continually subdividing professions, for the simple reason that as we progress no one man can learn all there is to know about any one of them, so he specializes in order to become highly efficient in some chosen department. Half a century ago, for example, and still obtaining in certain parts of Europe, if you wanted a tooth pulled you had to go to the barber. Dentistry was a side issue of the tonsorial artist's trade. Now, it is not only divorced from the barber's chair and become a great and dignified profession, but there are dentists who specialize on pulling teeth, and dentists who fill teeth, but don't pull, etc. Take the profession of medicine. Once, every doctor was called a leech. In those days if you had the croup, or the mumps, or diphtheria, or rheumatism, or pneumonia, or a headache, or a broken leg. the one infallible remedy was to bleed. Phlebotomy, they called it. Anybody who could use a lancet or attach a leech was a physician. And the trade could be mastered in a week or so. Nowadays there are a score of different branches of the medical profession, and nobody pretends to have the ability to master a fraction of the whole. So, under the world-pressure for superlative efficiency, men specialize by choosing some one branch of the profession and devote their energy and talent to it. So, likewise, the law, so engineering, and so about everything else.

There is another kind of specializing in which Nature and transportation play a part. Our forefathers, as a general rule, raised locally about everything they consumed, especially if they lived inland. If residing by the ocean or along a navigable stream, there was some exchange of products of the more stable kinds. But in those days and up to within the memory of many living men, anybody living any distance from the sea had to go to the sea for fish. Nothing perishable, in other words, could be transported any great distance from where it was grown or caught. In these days, however, the face of Nature is threaded with

railroads, which transport the products of one section to another, interchanging what is grown at one place for what is grown at another. With refrigerator cars, cheap transportation and space-annihilating trains, we have in our markets and upon our tables the fruits and vegetables and fish and flesh of all climes.

What has come about as the result of this change, and what is going on about us, scarcely noticed every day? Perhaps it may not have occurred to you. It amounts to this. We are specializing the face of Nature; or, to express it more elegantly, the irresistible tendency of economic processes is to dedicate each different area of the agricultural country to the crop or crops it can best grow. We no longer buy or sell in a restricted market, but in a national marketplace, with branches in every city and town in the country. As a consumer of farm crops you choose the best of anything in this world market and the best is only grown where the climate and soil conditions are most favorable for that particular thing. If you buy anything inferior to the best you insist on paying a less price for it. Reversing the point of view, if you have a farm anywhere, and the climate, say, is particularly adapted to growing onions, and not adapted to growing cabbages, you can't compete in the world-market in cabbages, as yours are inferior. If they sell at all it will be at a less price. Therefore, you will be urgently persuaded to specialize on the crop you can grow best. Now, applying this principle on a large scale, we shall find that a process of crop specializing is going on throughout the country; one section devoting itself more and more to apples; another to grain; another to alfalfa; another to potatoes; another to sugar beets and so on. It is Nature's process of compelling man to treat her aptitudes with respect. The sooner a district discovers what it can best grow, and its husbandmen devote their attention to that one, or more than one, crop, the better it will be better for the all concerned. And if we wish to carry the thought farther, it means progress towards improving the quality of everything sold in the markets of the world-which is one of the things a beneficent Nature is driving at, to improve and develop the human race.

Now, I came here today, or rather was invited to come here today, to talk about the Chicago Land Show. I think I mentioned it just about the time I went over the fence into the agricultural field. Although I know you are all wondering when I am going to quit, I refuse to desert the subject assigned me, even though I have seemingly balked a good deal in tackling it. There are several great land shows annually held in the big cities of the country; one at Chicago, one in New York, another at Omaha and others in Kansas City, St. Paul, Los Angeles, and possibly elsewhere. They are primarily money-making concerns for the fellows who run them; secondarily, a place where city people and homeseekers can go, on paying an entrance fee, to get literature about the various agricultural sections, see the selected products from such sections, breathe an atmosphere sweet with the perfume of fruit and blossoms, and if of a too trusting disposition, get gloriously buncoed. Lastly, it is a place where the States and private land companies, honest and fraudulent, mingle on the common plane of paying $2 per square foot of space occupied for the privilege of supplying the entertainment. As an agricultural spectacle it is charming, admirable and to a degree, magnificent.

The exhibit of Nevada at the Chicago Land Show, thanks to the interest and splendid work done by Professor True and Mr. Peterson of this University, in collecting, arranging and classifying the exhibit, was one of which I, as well as every other Nevadan, I think, who visited the Coliseum had every reason to be proud. It was worthy of the State and would have reflected no discredit on any State. The first familiar figure, to Mrs. Norcross and myself, who visited it was Professor Lewers, and he was exhibited the balance of the day as a sample product of the Nevada soil.

Contrary to expectations. I found many visitors to the show interested in agricultural Nevada. The psychological time had struck when all the States about us had exhausted the freshness of their appeal to homeseekers; when the homeseeker felt that all the best opportunities elsewhere in the West must be gone, and a new appeal caught his attention as perhaps offering unculled opportunities. I delivered some seventeen lectures, illustrated with colored stereopticon views of Nevada scenes, and found the audiences large and appreciative. I tried to tell them the simple truth, the good, bad, and indifferent, as I understood it, and to express what I further believe to be true, that this State, sparsely populated, desolate in its general appearance, with the water problem still to be conquered, is a coming agricultural State and one of the greatest, ulti

mately, in the Union. If you and I live 20 years longer we shall see this statement come true.

Now, in conclusion, I want to address a few sentences to the students of the Agricultural College here, and as well to any other student who might be persuaded to change his course of study on further investigation to that course. Scientific agriculture, today, is a great calling. It is demanding the best talent of this generation. It is second to none other in nobility-it is the first! The few past years have dignified it to a high profession-the coming years, and within your time, and I believe mine, will see it achieve something approaching the kingship among the crafts of man.