more. We are being distanced, not by greater strength, but by a wiser use of strength. Other classes know better than we what it will pay to do or avoid. This knowledge comes not by vague speculation, but by the mastery of facts. We farmers reason well enough upon what we think to be true, but we are so often mistaken in our facts that we are as apt to be led into doing unprofitable things as into attempting those which are profitable. To ascertain truth is usually difficult. To act upon error is the easiest of all things. So we take the easy road. This we must stop. There are signs that we are stopping. In fact, those who are in a position to do so already see a goodly multitude leaving the broad road and climbing the more difficult paths which really lead to the summit which we seek. This is the Hope of the farmer, the prospect of better things.

BOOK SECOND.

The Farmer's Education.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCIENTIFIC FARMER.

T is hard to account for the intense prejudice, often amounting to positive hostility, which many farmers entertain towards "scientific farming." An editor of a long-established agricultural journal once told me that he never allowed the term "scientific" to be used in its columns as applied to any farming operations, knowing, as he did, the intense dislike of many farmers for the term. And as the subscribers to agricultural journals comprise the most intelligent farmers, we can imagine what the prejudice must be among the more unintelligent class, which reads no such papers, and which my friend did not, therefore, have in mind.

Of course, like all prejudice, this has its origin in a misunderstanding, since no sane person would or could object to scientific farming, if he knew what is meant by it. What those dislike who ridicule scientific farming is what everybody dislikes, which is unfounded pretensions to superior knowledge.

While engaged for a short time in promoting Farmers' Institutes for the University of California, it was my duty to become fully informed of the feeling of farmers in regard to the work, in order that we might adapt our lectures and discussions to the real feeling, and not attempt to lead in any way until we had first gained confidence. It was, therefore, my habit to ask two or three of the most interested to carefully

note what was said of us behind our backs, and let me know, without mentioning names. The subjects discussed were the usual ones of soil composition, the action of water in the soil, plant physiology, the physics of plant growth, and the like, and, as a special effort was being made by the College of Agriculture, care was taken that each subject should be presented by specialists. In almost every instance the reports made to me showed that, while most of those present were interested, there were always some who were not, and the great majority of farmers did not come near us at all. The usual remark made about us by this class of farmers was that we were a "lot of - theorists." I indicate the adjective in order to show that the speakers were moved not merely by indifference, but by positive dislike. They considered us conceited mischief-makers. One of this class, after listening for a short time to a lecture on the treatment of faulty soils by one of the greatest living authorities on that subject, went out and reported to a congregation of his fellows on a street corner that "them fellers can't l'arn me nothin'," and straightway the party repaired to a neighboring grocery, and spent the day playing pedro. Of course these were specially lowminded men, probably incapable of improvement, and not destined to survive, but there is no doubt that more or less of this feeling exists in much better men, and is the greatest obstacle to profitable farming by small farmers.

The word "theorist," by the way, is a favorite expression among this class of persons. Now no sane person ever engages in any agricultural operation except upon some "theory" of his own. He performs certain work upon the "theory" that some particular result will follow. So we are all theorists. If our theory is based upon accurate and complete knowledge, it is pretty sure to be sound; if otherwise, there is great danger that it may be unsound, and results not desired follow our work. In calling scientific farmers "theorists," the uneducated man means, so far as he means anything, to say that the scientific man does not know his facts, but assumes things to be true which are not true, or not all the truth. In this assumption the objector is guilty of the same intellectual crime of which he

accuses others, and is himself wholly mistaken in his premises; for the men who are now employed in this work by the great universities do understand their subjects. The part which the farmer knows they assume, and do not waste time in talking about. "Science" does not bother itself with teaching a farmer how to hold his plow, or when to put in his crop, or the time to harvest, or any other of the mechanical operations of the farm. These are learned on the farm by practice. What science does for the farmer is to discover and make. known to him things which he can not or is not likely to discover for himself, but which, if he knows them, will enable him to apply his labor to better profit. The foolish farmer is the one who thinks he already knows all that is worth knowing, and refuses to learn more. When he competes with the farmer who studies, he finds that his competitor is producing more cheaply than he, and is underselling him, with the result that, sooner or later, he goes to the wall, and his farm passes to one who knows how to make better use of it.

Briefly, therefore, the term "scientific farming" simply means farming in the light of all the accurate information. obtainable from experience, observation, persons, or books. It excludes farming on the basis of inaccurate or incomplete. information. It makes no difference where the information comes from. A veterinary surgeon may never have been out of a great city, and yet be able to give the farmer essential information. The farmer must learn from the entomologist, the chemist, the physicist, and others who can teach him perfectly, although they never saw a plow. Per contra, the unscientific farmer is one who attempts to carry on the farm in the light of the trifling amount of information which one man can gather in a lifetime, and who imagines that the experience of able men ceases to be valuable when once it is written down in books.

The object of science applied to agriculture is to reduce cost of production. Science has cheapened, and is constantly cheapening, all products which the farmer has to buy. Until lately it has not, in America, been much applied to agriculture.

There are various reasons for this. For one thing,

scientific knowledge is extremely expensive, and in a new country, with insufficient capital, there were better inducements for enterprise in other directions. It was also the fact that our great areas of virgin soils enabled us to make money while employing wasteful methods, just as the earliest users of the steam engine made money by the use of machinery whose employment now would insure prompt bankruptcy to the user. Our competition while using even these wasteful methods has compelled the older European countries to make use of science in reducing costs to a degree of which we have little conception. Now our own virgin areas having all been occupied, the owners of our partially-exhausted soils are brought into competition with the farmers on virgin soils of the tropics and the southern hemisphere, and we feel their competition just as the European farmers have long felt ours. Among our own farmers some have been quick to see`and utilize the economies which science suggests, and are producing cheaper than their neighbors. Whenever produce sells "low" for a considerable time that fact is usually evidence that some are employing cheaper methods than others, and that their product is supplying the market. Those who do not employ as good methods are crowded out. It is in this way that nature kills off the weak.

It is not necessary or usually possible that the successful farmer should be a scientific man. It requires a lifetime to become a good scientist or a good farmer; very few men can be both. What is necessary is that the farmer shall make use of the discoveries of science to lessen costs of production, and the farmer who does this is a scientific farmer, no matter how he gets the necessary information.

In discussing the larger aspects of farm life we reached the conclusion that the "Hope of the farmer is in greater knowledge." The literature of the Patrons of Husbandry says that "education is the corner-stone of the Grange." Without some further explanation both these expressions are mere platitudes-meaning vague statements which no one will dis