el. There isn't any
man who knows enough to comprehend the United States. It is cooeperative
effort, necessarily. You cannot perform the functions of this Chamber of
Commerce without drawing in not only a vast number of men, but men, and
a number of men, from every region and section of the country. The
minute this association falls into the hands, if it ever should, of men
from a single section or men with a single set of interests most at
heart, it will go to seed and die. Its strength must come from the
uttermost parts of the land and must be compounded of brains and
comprehensions of every sort. It is a very noble and handsome picture
for the imagination, and I have asked myself before I came here to-day,
what relation you could bear to the Government of the United States and
what relation the Government could bear to you?

There are two aspects and activities of the Government with which you
will naturally come into most direct contact. The first is the
Government's power of inquiry, systematic and disinterested inquiry, and
its power of scientific assistance. You get an illustration of the
latter, for example, in the Department of Agriculture. Has it occurred
to you, I wonder, that we are just upon the eve of a time when our
Department of Agriculture will be of infinite importance to the whole
world? There is a shortage of food in the world now. That shortage will
be much more serious a few months from now than it is now. It is
necessary that we should plant a great deal more; it is necessary that
our lands should yield more per acre than they do now; it is necessary
that there should not be a plow or a spade idle in this country if the
world is to be fed. And the methods of our farmers must feed upon the
scientific information to be derived from the State departments of
agriculture, and from that taproot of all, the United States Department
of Agriculture. The object and use of that department is to inform men
of the latest developments and disclosures of science with regard to all
the processes by which soils can be put to their proper use and their
fertility made the greatest possible. Similarly with the Bureau of
Standards. It is ready to supply those things by which you can set
norms, you can set bases, for all the scientific processes of business.

I have a great admiration for the scientific parts of the Government of
the United States, and it has amazed me that so few men have discovered
them. Here in the