Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Ag Building Speech [PAGE 10]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

more profitable enterprises. It has taken no little courage on the part of college students to start or continue a course in agriculture in the face of conditions surrounding agriculture, and it is no wonder that many have weakened. It should not be assumed, however, that there are not plenty of young men who would prefer farming and life in the country to anything else as long as they can see a reasonably good chance of maintaining on the farm a standard of living that will not put out the fires of a more abundant life inevitably kindled in the heart and head of every college man and woman. When agricultural distress is abroad in the land, the farmer is advised to change this or that practice in order to improve his condition. This is probably helpful advice since colleges, agricultural experiment stations, and extension services are among those who extend it, but the farming business is not susceptible to quick change and easy adjustment. The farmer himself has learned that ordinarily by the time he and his fellow unfortunates make some of the so-called adjustments there is another crop of adjustments about due and perhaps the latter may even point back over the same road he has traveled to the same place from which he started. Experiences of this kind have caused a certain degree of conservatism among farmers that some have interpreted as a lack of progressiveness. As a rule, the older a farmer gets the less inclined he is to try new ways. This must not be construed as meaning that he has grown less progressive; it may mean that he is growing in wisdom. The more experienced a farmer becomes, the surer he is that the farming business is one in which he cannot afford to paddle out into uncertain depths with a leaky boat. The college of agriculture and its experiment station serve in the field of agriculture much the same purpose as do the medical school and clinic in the medical world. The agricultural college should attempt to prepare its students to make a proper diagnosis of an agricultural situation in order to know what are the real causes of the conditions that seem to place farmers at a disadvantage, and, having determined the causes, to show how these difficulties or disadvantages may be overcome or eliminated. An institution of standing does not attempt to teach remedies until they have been determined and demonstrated by the most careful experimental methods. The more serious an agricultural situation the more difficult is the diagnosis. Just as in medical practice, when it becomes necessary to deal with a particularly baffling case it is necessary to keep the patient under observation for a considerable time, so in agriculture it may require months, even years, to get at the root of a trouble, and then more time to work out painstakingly the remedy or solution. Again conditions develop that are, or at least seem to be, so chronic or inherent that there is little if anything that can be done save to make the patient as comfortable as possible and to let the disease run its course. It is

{10 J