“The pessimist always assumes that every man who quits farming for some other business does so because there is something the matter with the farm.  Mr. James J. Hill has recently considered the question and decided that, unless the farmer and his family can be confined on the land and be compelled to do better work than they have been doing, the balance of the population must starve to death.  The bug-aboo of impending decadence raised by such talk is based upon a wrong assumption, inadequate statistics, and a failure to comprehend the evolutional movement in agriculture.”

The evolutional movement means, of course, that we are different from other people.  Have not England, Germany and France run their lands down until they produce only fourteen bushels of wheat per acre and have we not steadily built ours up to an average yield of thirty bushels?  Other peoples wear out their soil because they fail to have part in the evolutional movement; whereas, did we not come to America and at once begin to make our rich land richer than it ever was in the virgin state?  Do you not know, Sir, that the oldest lands in America are now the richest, most productive, and most valuable?  We admit, of course, that the Bureau of Soils of the United States Department of Agriculture reports the common level upland loam soil of St. Mary country, Maryland, to be valued at $1 to $3 an acre, and the same kind of land in Prince George county, adjoining the District of Columbia, to be worth $1.50 to $5; but do you not know the American evolutional movement could easily move all those decimal points two places and at once make those values read from $100 to $500 an acre.  And likewise, it would be a very simple matter to change the yield of corn in Georgia from eleven bushels per acre and have it read one hundred and ten bushels.  Why not, if an acre of corn in the adjoining State of South Carolina has produced two hundred and thirty-nine bushels in one season?  Do you not see that this simple evolution would also put plate glass in the thousands of windowless homes now inhabited by human beings, both white and colored, in the state of Georgia?

There is another phase of this evolutional movement which should not be overlooked.  There is already fast developing in this country a class of people who can live and grow fat on hot air, and they will tell you that your only trouble is poor digestion, and they are glad that they can see the bright side of things and enjoy life in this glorious country, assured that the future will take care of itself.  Have not all other great agricultural countries rapidly gotten into this evolutional movement until all their people live on Easy Street?

I have a letter from a missionary in China, a former schoolmate, Clarence Robertson, who resigned the position of Assistant Professor of mechanical engineering in Purdue University in order to accept in the largest sense the Master’s specific invitation to “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.”