ey did not know
and for no rewards except further enslavement. They may even have been
developed to a high degree of manual or technical skill that they might
the better support governments to make conquests. They have been on the
bottom, upholding the whole superstructure and pressed into the earth by
the weight of it. When the final history is written, the lot of the man
on the land will be the saddest chapter.

But in the nineteenth century, the man at the bottom began really to be
recognized politically. This recognition is of two kinds,--the use that
a government can make in its own interest of a highly efficient
husbandry, and the desire to give the husbandman full opportunity and
full justice. I hope that in these times the latter motive always
prevails. It is the only course of safety.

Great public-service institutions have now been founded in the rural
movement. The United States Department of Agriculture has grown to be
one of the notable governmental establishments of the world, extending
itself to a multitude of interests and operating with remarkable
effectiveness. The chain of colleges of agriculture and experiment
stations, generously co-operative between nation and State, is unlike
any other development anywhere, meaning more, I think, for the future
welfare and peace of the people than any one of us yet foresees. There
is the finest fraternalism, and yet without clannishness, between these
great agencies, setting a good example in public service. And to these
agencies we are to add the State departments of agriculture, the work of
private endowments although yet in its infancy, the growing and very
desirable contact with the rural field of many institutions of learning.
All these agencies comprise a distinctly modern phase of public
activity.

A new agency has been created in the agricultural extension act which
was signed by President Wilson on the 8th of May in 1914. The farmer is
to find help at his own door. A new instrumentality in the world has now
received the sanction of a whole people and we are just beginning to
organize it. The organization must be extensive, and it ought also to be
liberal. No such national plan on such a scale has ever been attempted;
and it almost staggers one when one even partly comprehends the
tremendous consequences that in all likelihood will come of it. The
significance of it is not yet grasped by the great body of the people.

Now, the problem is to relate all