There are two prominent ways of increasing the producing capacity of a people: First, there is Conservation demonstration (we shall be using this word "Conservation" in our prayers if we don't look out). (Laughter) Last year we had 12,500 boys in four southern States, all under sixteen years of age, each of whom grew an acre of corn--the South never grew as much corn in its history as it did last year--and some of those boys grew over 150 bushels to the acre (applause). They sold it at different prices. They were promised, as an encouragement, free tickets to Washington to see the President and the Capitol, and that the Secretary would give them diplomas. Well, I thought little about this until in marched the boys--looking very serious--each exactly like a man who is getting an LL.D. from a university. The first view of those boys was amusing, but the next one to me was very pathetic. A diploma, you know, is given to a man or a woman who does good work in a college course. Didn't the boy who grew 150 bushels of corn to the acre _do_ something? He did; he did the best there was in him; he put his will into the work. I signed the diplomas, and those boys went out as proud as any boys ever went away from a university. This year we have 50,000 boys in the southern States, each under sixteen years of age, each growing an acre of something, each getting lessons and hints in all directions from everybody that can give them, with regard to how to grow crops; we have 400 agents in the South.
Now let me tell you something. You will find in every northern and eastern and western State a minority of good farmers and, I am compelled to confess, a majority of poor farmers. They don't know how to farm; they have yet to learn. Where did bad farming begin, do you think? Why, back in the eastern States where they do everything well--except farming. Now where is there worse farming than there? I believe that the President of Tulane University used to live there; perhaps he can tell us. When I was a boy I went to church on Sunday and to prayer meeting in the middle of the week--I had to (laughter)--but they didn't educate the boys toward the farms; they educated them toward the professions, toward the mechanic arts, toward the factories. And when they were big enough and had an education they left the farm, they left the father and mother there, and by and by when the father and mother couldn't farm any more they rented out the farm--and today the same thing is beginning in Iowa. I can't tell you what is happening in Minnesota; you people who live here must be the judges whether the same robbery of the soil is beginning in Minnesota. A soil robber is a man who grows grain and hay to sell from the farm and puts nothing back; that is what he is, and that is where he originated--back East.