The Essentials of Permanent Agriculture

The Essentials of Permanent Agriculture By Dr. E. G. Peterson, President Utah Agricultural College

I — Good Stock It is a truism that no stream can rise higher than its source. It isa natural law that energy cannot be created, increased or diminished or finally destroyed, but is capable only of being transformed from one kind to another. Such is a statement of the Law of Conservation and Energy. We cannot gather figs from thistles. Neither can we expect high returns in civilization and culture from inferior people. The first step in the development of permanent agriculture is to see to it that superior people engage in farming. Good stock is as necessary in human beings as it is in horses or cattle if we are to secure a definite result. The offspring of perverts and criminals by nature cannot be expected to think holy thoughts or maintain sustained and faithful adherence to high ideals. An Indian cayuse may never father a Percheron or a thoroughbred. A beautiful Hereford calf never came from a scrawny, gaunt sire. Qualities of the mind and the spirit are transmitted as are qualities of the body. No son has greater potentiality of body, mind or spirit than the power of body, mind or spirit of his ancestors either individually or by combination. Artists tend to beget artists. Wise leaders and industrious workers tend to transmit the qualities which produce wisdom and industry. To be sure, often a strong father has an apparently weak son. Yet if we investigate we should find the weakness of the son back somewhere in the ancestry passed to the son by direct transmission or through disastrous combination of qualities in the male and female elements of the line of descent; either this would be true or we would discover the strength of the father hidden in the son through abuse, dissipation or through disuse of the organs or qualities which if exercised would produce the strength of the father again in the son. Strong men may mate with weak women or the reverse. The children may thereby inherit strength or weakness or a combination. In other words, the strength and the weakness we see about us does not come from nothing or from external forces. It comes from within the family. It may be developed or latent, but as surely as figs come only from fig trees, so power in the

322 IMPROVEMENT ERA eon comes only from power in parentage, and so with clean, strong bodies, so with industry, intelligence, faith, and dignity of spirit. If we are to have a high rural civilization, if we are to have permanent agriculture upon which to build happy, clean and prosperous homes and that resultant stability of citizenship which comes in largest measure from the farms, we must put and keep strong, clean, superior people on the land. The agriculture of the South is hopeless until the "white trash" get off the land, and the "black trash" likewise. We can never make superior people out of white or black trash. We must replace them. No more can we take a run-down herd on the range and expect by feeding, ranging and sheltering them properly, to develop from them a herd of superior beef animals. The wise husbandman brings in a great sire to lead the herd, and soon by selection and great care he will produce after the kind of the great sire. We must, if we would preserve our agriculture, keep our land in good hands. We must see to it that the profits in farming are sufficient to attract the superior. We must see to it that comforts and educational advantages are numerous and plentiful, so that families may be reared in harmony with the desires of worthy and able men and women. There must be the advantages of lights, automobiles, hot and cold running water in the home, bath tubs, sanitary disposal of sewage, and garbage, good roads, cement walks, flowers, substantial and sightly buildings, good schools, and recreational opportunities. Utah stands first in many of these things. There is good stock on Utah farms. We must see that all else is supplied so that the qualities of quick strength and stability which we have shall be preserved and developed. Logan, Utah