Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, May 21, 1911, HALF-TONE, Page 2, Image 18
! 'S i i THE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE: MAT 21, 1911. I ' M 11 .MJ.J. M. -m--r- Secretary of Agriculture Wilson Discusses His New Schemes w ASHINOTON, D. C. (Special Correspond-, ence of The Bee.) Secretary Wllaoil 1 the mightiest of all the slaves of Uncle Earn, the modern Aladdin. Our patri archal uncle rubs the lamp and Mr. Wil son mores the world to do his bidding. He waves his wand over the deserts, and ten blades of graaa spring up where none has grown before. He pats on his Fortunatus' cap an flies to the Atlas moun tains, bringing back macaroni wheat which adds bil lions of loaves to our national bread basket. He scours the earth for new nuts and fruits, and from China and Japan brings rice which yields a thousand-fold on the lowlands of Louisiana and Texas. He shakes his maglo rod and the nitrogen of the air Is harnessed to bac teria which make Mother Earth produce as she has not produced before. He shows the farmers how to double their corn and the planters how to add millions to the value of their cotton. He 1b the friend of the helpful hen and the little red apple, and, In short, the mightiest genii of all those in the employ of our na tional ruler, Uncle Sam, Patriarch. Eighty Thousand Million Dollars. I first met Secretary Wilson when he had Just taken his seat as one of the members of President McKln ley's cabinet. That was fourteen years ago, and ha has been working wonders ever since. He Is a plain Scotch farmer, but he deals In sums that would stag ger a Morgan or a Guggenheim. During the past ten years the proceeds pf our farms have been more than ighty billion dollars. Eighty thousand millions! It means enough to give tour thousand dollars to every family or eight hun dred dollars to every man, woman and child in the whole United States. That sum has come out of the (arms within ten years and yearly the product In creases. When the present secretary took charge of the Department of Agriculture It annually amounted to about four billions of dollars. In 1910 It was al most nine billions and when the present scheme of farm improvement and new crops have been generally adopted we shall be rich enough to buy Mexico and Canada and to inaugurate peace movements through out the world. Eighty thousand million dollars! The sum is beyond human conception. It Is ten millions more than all the wealth of Great Britain and Ireland. It Is more than twice the value of all Russia owns, four times the total wealth of Austria Hungary, and over fifteen times that of Holland or Spain. One Year's Farm Crop. Coming down to the crops of a single year, Secre tary Wilson tells me that during 1910 our farmers yanked almost nine billion dollars out of Mother Earth's pockets. That sum would come within 10 per cent of the government revenues of every country on earth, and It would pay nine-tenths of all the salaries of those governments, Including their armies and navies, and every other employe, from the kings who sit the thrones to the women who scrub the palaces and public offices. Nine thousand millions of money a year means just bout thirty millions fof every Working day. It means more than a million dollars for every hour, twenty-thousand dollars for every , minute and over three hundred and thirty-three dollars for every second. . Take out your watch and look at its face. Follow the second hand as It measure the minutes. Every time It goes around its little dial our farmers are adding $20,000 to our national wealth. Now put It to your ear and listen to the ticking. Every tick means more'i than three hundred . dollars, and that three hundred Is addedwith every tick, day and night, Week In and week out, all the year through. It la the man who has had imuch to do with making this wealth that you talk with today. J am merely the phonograph, and through me the secretary of Ag riculture Is speaking to you. We are sitting in Mr. Wilson's office and the secretary is talking of Uncle -Earn, Patriarch. Ten Year With the Farmer. Says he: "It is the duty of the government to take care of very citizen, and it should study bis comfort In every possible way. It should show him how to husband his wealth, and to develop his property for himself and the nation. These are some of the things we are trying to do and I must also say some of these we are doing." "Can you give me an Idea of your work for the farmers t" "We are not working for the farmers alone," was the reply. "This department is for all the people. It affects every man, woman and child In the country, and Its sphere is Increasing each year. We are now spending 115,000,000 per annum, and the whole of this is used for investigations and operations which tend to the increase of our national and individual wealth. We have more than 12,000 employes, and we have trebled our force within the past ten years." "Can you tell me some of the things you are doing, Mr. Secretary?" "I could mention a hundred, and the work of each would give you the material for a very good letter. You will have to visit the bureaus and I will see that everything is thrown open to you. Thls'ls a great ex periment station, consisting of an army of practical scientists who are working along all sorts of lines. If you want to know about aerial navigation I will turn you over to Prof. Moore and he will tell you the re sult of the latest Investigations of the upper air. If you would know about our forests I can send you to the chief of that service. He has 8,000 men under him. and he takes care of 190,000,000 acres of woods. "Would you like to know shout coo king T We have themists who are studying foods and who will put till 7 , h . s r7 A v. 0 r v I I , - 5; . W v. mm l m1 n f A j t, if J " ViitA -2 V. 2 - -itei L MMnsUHMislbBlB 7T 7&5 bojleind refused a house Jyy-hiS fafher cultivated. JuStaere ' 1 ' you In a glass case and feed you there, telling you Just how much of each bite goes to make muscle and how much Is pure waste. "I have recently tested the matter of cheese. I have always had the Idea that green cheese is not good for the stomach and that old and sharp cheese Is better. YCe fed a man upon the different kinds "and tested it, and now we know which is right" ' ' Fighting The Bugs. ' ' "Are you inters ted in bugs? We have a depart ment devoted to them which Is Btudying all sorts of Insects for the good of the people. With other things It is working on the gypsy moth and the browntail moth, which are now ravaging the trees of a large part of New England. TheBe moths were brought iu from abroad by a scientist for the purpose of study. He allowed -a-pair or so to get loose, and the result is, they have multiplied by millions and are destroying trees over an area of 10,000 square miles. We beard that there were parasites which would exterminate th(s pest, and Dr. L. O. Howard, the chief of the bu reau of entomology, has been sent to Europe three times to find them. One of his trips was to th Crimea, and It was there he discovered the moth's greatest enemy. We have imported it. Congress has given us an appropriation to wipe out that pest. "Another Interesting investigation," continued Sec retary Wilson, "relates to the fever tick which has ruined the cattle In parts of the south to the extent of somehing like forty million dollars a year. We looked everywhere to get something to fight it, but failed. 'At last we discovered that the tick bred on the ground and that the young fastened themselves to the plants and crawling up them were able to get on such cattle as fed In the pastures. We found that they had to reach the cattle very soon or they died. With this knowledge we got the farmers to divide their fields in the middle and put the stock on one side. In a short time the ticks which had crawled up the grass died of starvation. We now had all the cattle dipped In a bath which destroyed the ticks on them, and moved them across to the other-side of the field. Within a few days all the ticks In the now vacant pasture had died the same way, and that land was clear. By these means we have already driven this petout of be tween ninety and one hundred million acres of pasture lands. The total area Is about 145.000 sauare miles raisers of the United States. They are numbered by the tens of thousands. The movement began in the great corn patch of the Mississippi valley, and at the St. Louis exposition there were about 8,000 separate exhibits of corn raised in the older corn regions by as many thousand individual boys. These boys had each one acre of land, which he planted and cultivated after the rules laid down by this department.' Prizes were glvenln each district to the boy who produced the most and best corn, and tho results were a yield which was double, treble, and In some cases even live or six times that which was gotten before. Corn Versus Cotton. "That was some years ago," continued the secretary. "It was before the 'boll weevil had begun to bite deep into the cotton crop of the south. As you know, cot ton has long been the one crop of that section. The planters have raised almost nothing else. They have Imported their hogs and their hominy, have bought mules and other live stock of the north and have even brought in the stuff to feed them. We wanted to make the south self-supporting, to diversify the crops and to show what corn would do for the land. This has been accomplished largely through the boys. We shall soon have 100,000 boy fanners who will each have an acre or more to oultlvate after our methods. We had more than 40,000 last year, and we have already doubled that number. We have thousands of southern farmers who are experimenting with corn and thou sands who are already raising It for the money they can make from the crop. As a result of a few years work we, have Increased the corn there until the south Is now producing one-third of all raised in the Union, and its crop will Boon equal that of the great corn patch of the central Mississippi valley. The south is ' bound to be as much a land of corn as it has been and Is a land of cotton." Stories of Boy Farmers. . "Tell me more about the boys," Mr. Secretary. "I could talk all day about that," replied the gray- . haired chief of Hhe Agricultural department. "We had eleven of the little fellows here last fall. We gave them diplomas- and a free trip to Washington as competitive prizes for raising the most and best corn on one acre. They took land in states that have been producing on the average from fifteen to twenty bush- V - and besides, he was about as mean as they make them. His boy had asked for the use of an acre, and the father refused, Celling him he would not have anything to do with such foolishness. The boy per sisted, however, and the father finally pointed to a rough hillside overgrown with brush and spotted with Btumps and stones, and told him if he would grub that acre and move off the stones he could have it. The boy vent to work, and finally cleared It. Then the old man said: 'That acre is too good for me to lose. I think I will plant it myself.' The boy cried, and the father finally said: 'Well, if you will clear another acre beside that I won't take it from you, and you may plant it and do what ybu please.' There upon the boy again went to work and cleared the sec ond acre. He planted it to corn alter our directions, and as a result he made eighty-eight bushels. At the same time his father planted and cultivated the acre adjoining, using the old way. He made Just eighteen. Since then the old man has been converted It is equal to three and one-half states the size of els Pr acr and farmed it. They worked under our to our way of farming. He goes with his hoy to the rnU " 1UntlAii w w A 4tiA waoiiU 4a 4iav K a r a wb (an1 n - am 1 li 1 I Jk 1.11- . V 1L. 1 A -1 V X Ohio. Teaching the Boys to Farm. "Tell me something about the work you are doing for the farmers' boys. Mr. Secretary," I said. "That is a big story," replied Mr. Wilson. "With the assistance of the states we are establishing schools for the teaching of farming, and improved agriculture is being taught In the public schools. We are also doing a great deal of practical work with the boys on the farms." "You may have heard something of the boy corn direction and the result is they have raised up to as high as 228 bushels per acre, and one of them has produced 119 buBhels on an acre at a cost of 8 cents a bushel. We have thousands of boys who have har . vested from the ono acre they farmed double as much as their fathers grew on any acre adjoining, and some who have produced five times as much. The Meanest Mian in the South. "Take, for Instance, the case of one bright southern boy," the secretary of agriculture continued. "His father had no faith in what he called book farming, i Modern Taste for Scented Tobacco T HAT the fragrance of pure tobacco is to many smokers a mere memory, and that nauseating foreign flavors, including oils, glycerine, formaldehyde and other preser vatives are added to, tobacco, are among the claims set forth by tne London Lancet in an article calling attention to the changing tastes of smokers and the modern demand for scented tobacco. "We are quite prepared to be told," said the Lancet, "that the public like, or even prefer, a scented tobacco, and the trade must be ready to meet the peculiarities of its customers. If that Is the case the palate of the public, for some reason or other, must have gone astray, which Is a pity, since a vitiated taste quickly invites bad trade practices. It Is pretty certain, at any rate, that It the real demand of the smoker is in favor of a highly scented tobacco' It matters very Utile what the quality cf the tobacco la. He does not seek the pleasing qualities of the tobacco Itself, unadulterated, unolled, unscented; he is satis fied with an added scent which is not due to tobacco at all. To him tobacco merely serves the role of a smouldering vehicle, his choice of a brand being based upon a scent which is foreign and artificial. "Depraved taste may be traced, we think, to the action In the trade in the first instance," and to the meek and weak attitude of its patrons. The matter is one of some importance, because a consideration of it naturally suggests the possibility of foreign ma terials In tobacco which may give additional risks to the smoking habit. The word adulteration may be objected to, but it is difficult to avoid Its use In view of the fact fhat large quantities of foreign scents, besides oils, glycerine, formaldehyde or other pre servatives are added to tobacco. Our view Is that It wonld be better If the tobacco manufacturer kept no account with the drysalter and chemist." agricultural fairs and tells about the eighty-eight bushels of corn they raised on an acre, saying: 'That is what me and my boy done.' Farming With Goats. "In another Instance," continued the secretary, "an Arkansas farmer would not give his boy a horse to cultivate his acre. The boy paid to have the land plowed, and after that he did all his cultivating with a common, everyday goat. Notwithstanding that he raised fifty bushels of corn. Another boy bad not even a goat and he harnessed' the calves, and made seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre. The depart ment Is full of such stories." "That is the kind of work that makes men, Mr. Sec retary," said I. "That is what I told the boys who won the prize trips to Washington. The corn clubs of the south are making men, and the boys who belong to them will be among the best men of the future. When a boy learns how to manage an acre and to count every cent that goes in and all that comes out, as well as to make It produce, as those boys are doing, he comes mighty near to learning bow to manage a farm. He learns how to work and how to save. Take the boys who came down to Washington. Every one of them ap preciated the value of the cent and the dime. One had been given $160 to pay his expenses to the capital and bark, and he was to have all that was left. He came from beyond the Mississippi river. When he reached here he looked rather tired. One of our men asked him what kind of a trip he had and whether he had slept well on the cars. He replied: 'not very well.' And upon further questioning said that be had sat up all the way. Said he: 'A sleeping car would have cost me $5 and that Is a lot of money to me.' He .was asked as to his meals, and he said he had gone into the diner, but that they wanted to charge him a dollar for dinner, and so he waited until he got to Memphis, and there got some apples, popcorn and bread, and that was enough until he reached Washington. Another boy went to Pittsburg, and In the restaurant at the depot was asked to pay 10 cents for a cup of coffee. He was horrified, and that Is the last coffee he drank during the trip. Joe Stone of Georgia, who is only twelve years of age, had to pay one-third of Els crop to the landlord of whom his father rented the farm. He raised 102 bushels at a cost of 2 9 cents. Another boy named Henry, who came from Louis iana, raised almost 140 bushels at a cost of 13 cents, and he sold his crop at f 3 a bushel for seed. That boy has put in five acres this year, and he expects to get 600 bushels of corn from them. He Is going to ths high school, and the thousand dollars he thinks this year's crop will net him is to be used to pay for his college education. Bashful Ira and President Taft. 1 "Speaking of the making men of the boys," contin ued the secretary. "I can think of nothing more edu cational. This work develops their self-reliance and encourages them to think and act for themselves. "Take another of the prize winners, little Ira Smith of Arkansas. He was bo bashful when the demonstra tor of the Agricultural department visited bis father that he would not speak to him. He could not be per suaded to talk and ran out of the house. Nevertheless the boy, after raising 119 bushels on his acre at a cost of '8 cents a bushel, talked with President Taft here at Washington and was not afraid. When the boys called at the White house the president tackled Ira Smith first, saying: " 'Now tell me the truth, my boy, didn't you pick out the best acre on your father's place for that earn?' " 'No,' replied little Ira. 'My acre was Just like the rest.' " 'And do you expect to try It again,' said the presi dent. " 'Yes, I do. I have already selected my acre and I hope to raise more corn next year than I raised this.' "But it Is not the effect that the work has on the boys alone that should be considered," said the secre tary. "Every one of the thousands of boys who are working that way represents a family and its neigh bors, and In this movement we are educating whole communities and whole states. We are revolutionis ing the work of the farmer of the south, and the changes now going on will make that section one of the richest and most stable parts of the country. The south is just at the edge of Its beginning and Its growth in wealth from now on will be surprising to all the other parts of the union." FRANK O. CARPENTER. 7 y r