Photograph by A. H. Blackiston SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE HOUSTON PRESENTING WALTER LEE DUNSON A DIPLOMA AS THE CHAMPION BOY CORN GROWER OF THE UNITED STATES only about 15 per cent of the total landed area of the world, it has been demonstrated that with scientific agriculture this area itself might suffice to feed a pop ulation vastly greater than that now living. With all of her teeming millions, only 18 per cent of Asia's land, 12 per cent of that of the Americas and Africa, 27 per cent of that of Europe, and 5 per cent of that of Australia have ever felt the touch of the plow. Without encroaching at all upon the world's forests, but using only the steppes, pampas, savannas, and prairie lands, there might be added to the earth's farming lands an area twice as great as that now under active agricultural op erations. The United States has been working along lines looking more to the extension of scientific methods to the present cultivated acreage, than to the extension of The farm operations to new acreage. bulk of the $30,000,000 it now spends annually, through its Department of Agriculture, is for the improvement of farming methods. In latter years a program for the taking of the gospel of good farming to the farmer himself, and demonstrating it in practice, instead of writing it down upon paper, has been productive of very wonderful results. In the club work of the last fiscal year hundreds of county agents of the Department of Agriculture, working in thirtythree States, went out upon the farm and showed the farmers themselves how to increase their yields. The thousands of farmers who accepted the offer to farm under the direction of the Department of Agriculture increased their yield of corn nine bushels per acre, their wheat seven bushels per acre, and their oats ten bushels per acre. TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA HOW TO "SHOOT" GOOD CROPS But probably more significant even than the work among the farmers themselves, has been the work among the boys and girls. Sixty thousand boys and fifty thousand girls were enrolled in club work in the Southern States last year. Many of the boys were organized into clubs to raise pigs and poultry, others into clubs for demonstrating the advantage of four-crop rotation in southern farming, and still others into clubs for the growing of winter legumes for soil improvement. Girls were taught to make house gardens and to preserve for home use the garden products as well as the waste fruits and vegetables of the entire farm. In the north and northwestern States 150,000 boys and girls were enrolled, the leading club projects being the growing of corn and potatoes and garden and canning work. The success that has followed these activities has been wonderful, demon strating to the farmers that their children. can accomplish marvels of which they never dreamed. Ten girls in Mississippi produced 27,850 pounds of tomatoes on ten one-tenth-of-an-acre plots. They were working as a team for a prize given by Kentucky business men. The value of their tomatoes was $1,179, and the profits on their joint plots-together only one acre in extent-amounted to $868. Ten boys in Alabama averaged 171 bushels of corn to the acre. The people in their several communities no longer have a contempt for the farming experts of the Department of Agriculture. Heretofore they have always urged that with the money of Uncle Sam to spend it was but natural that large yields could be gotten, but that the average farmer could not afford to duplicate these methods. The boys and girls who have taken part in these contests have given such an effective answer to these contentions that even the inertia of the indifferent farmer has been overcome. Many other kinds of club work is being done. CLUB MEMBERS SELECTING THEIR SEED IN THE FIELD BEFORE FROST The farmer who sees that every grain he puts into the ground is one able to produce a hardy sprout lays the foundation for a big crop In Oregon a packing-house distributed a carload of brood sows among the children of the Hood River region of that State and of Washington. They were sold on credit to these boys and girls, who agreed to raise them according to the Department of Agriculture specifications. The buyers were charged 6 per cent interest on the purchase price, to be paid out of the profits from the pigs raised. The school officials of the Hood River region have charge of the experiments, and those boys and girls doing the best work and making the best reports are to be awarded scholarships to the State University, and other prizes. THE STORY OF A LOAN A farmer in Macon, Georgia, who carries a large bank account, went to his bank with his twelve-year-old son and endorsed the latter's note for ten dollars. The cashier inquired of him why he was having his boy borrow ten dollars when. he himself had so much money in the bank. The farmer replied that his son was going to enter a boys' pig club, and that he wanted him to acquire a banking experience as he went along. He said that it was worth ten dollars to him to see how his boy handled the loan. An Alabama philanthropist hit upon another idea for increasing pig-raising in his community. He bought twenty pigs and sold them to as many boys, the bargain being that when the boys brought him two pigs to take the place of the one thus sold, the debt should be considered discharged. The philanthropist then took these two pigs and gave them to two |