at less than the present cost. Our marketing system is cumbersome, unwieldy, wasteful and burdensome. (Applause.) The woman who orders her supplies over the telephone pays more money and gets less than the one who goes to market. I had the honor of speaking before the National Federation of Women's Clubs at San Francisco on the first day of July. It was the greatest and most intelligent audience I ever faced. They were very enthusiastic and were quick to grasp the points as they were made. This great organization affiliated itself with the National Soil Fertility League, and when they did so we felt it brought to us the greatest assistance that could possibly come. I know of no organization of wider influence than the Women's Clubs of America. I have heard it said, if you want to get anything done to get a woman after it. (Applause.)

We must re-direct our agriculture; we must raise our meat upon the farms. The ranges are gone. The silo, alfalfa and scientific methods make it possible for the farmer to carry at least twice as much stock upon his farm as he thinks he can carry. In the silo the feed is kept practically green and juicy. You get forty per cent. more out of your corn by putting it through the silo than by handling it in the old way. There is no reason why the cost of producing meat may not be reduced practically one-half. The farmer has given and is giving too much thought to how much he can get for what he raises. It is equally important that he raise more. If he wants 2,400 bushels of corn, it is better to raise it on forty acres with a yield of sixty bushels than to raise it on sixty acres with a yield of forty bushels.

Our plan is to bring home to the farmer the best method that has been determined by the agricultural college and experiment station. We want to get the best results from year to year and at the same time build up the soil. This can be done and this is scientific farming. This is what the whole world needs. The colleges of agriculture and experiment stations have gathered a vast fund of knowledge, and if this were put into practical operation it would double the yield of our farms within a few years and give us a large surplus for export and bring money into the country. We would get richer and richer as the years go by. We would largely supply the world with food. Our position in the councils of nations would be paramount. When it comes to the question of peace or war, the country that has the money and the bread basket is ten times more potent than the nation that only has back of it battleships and armies. (Applause.) So I wish to emphasize that the success of this country rests primarily upon the scientific farming of our fields. Let us remember that no country ever became great and remained so that could not furnish its people with an ample food supply at a moderate cost. To that end we are securing legislation that will put the plan in operation. The Lever measure is a simple one, it creates

no new administrative machinery; it simply carries to the farmer and puts to work the information and knowledge that the States and Federal Government have been gathering for fifty years. This whole matter may be likened to a great irrigating system. The United States Department of Agriculture is a dam, it has been gathering and has stored up the knowledge the water. The colleges of agriculture are the main channels for reaching the various parts of the country; but so long as the water is back of the dam it is doing no good; so long as it remains in the main channels it is accomplishing nothing. What is needed is to get the water to the grass roots, or, in other words, our purpose is to get the information to the actual farmer-the man behind the plow.

Fifty years ago Horace Greeley said, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." If he were here today he would say go South and East, for that is the land of opportunity. In my judgment this Congress ought to meet next year somewhere in the South. That part of the land is entitled to recognition, and you will get a welcome such as you never had before.

In conclusion, I wish to urge that you give us every possible support. We need it. It will help you and it will help us. Let us all work together for reviving agriculture. (Applause.)

(A woman in the audience): "Is it true that Congress is investigating this silo business and under the pure food law is it to be condemned? Also, what must we do in Indiana to cultivate alfalfa?"

Mr. GROSS-I have not heard anything about the Federal Government condemning silo, and I do not expect to. Inoculate your soil for alfalfa. You had better take this matter up with your people at Purdue. Ask them what to do. They will send you all the information necessary. They will examine into conditions and tell you just what to do. The most valuable crop today, outside of wheat and corn, is alfalfa. plause.)

(Ap

Chairn an WHITE-I have been handed a communication, and I wish to say for the benefit of the gentleman who sent it to the chair that it will be referred to the Executive Committee, which takes up matters of this kind. This is the communication:

"You are requested to make a motion that this organization take steps toward publishing a monthly, or quarterly, magazine, to be known as the National Conservation Magazine. If the society is unable to finance it, there is little doubt that the Carnegie Institute or the Sage Foundation would back it."

Chairman WHITE-I will now introduce a gentleman who will tell you "The Story of the Air," Prof. Willis L. Moore, of Washington, Chief of the United States Weather Bureau. (Applause.)

Mr. MOORE-Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been trying to reason out why the management put me at the end of the program, and I have concluded that they had an idea that along about this time in the proceedings they would need to have some one take the platform that had supervision over atmospheric air of abnormal temperature.

Now, why should one wish to conserve the atmosphere? I shall try to show you that that is one of the assets of this continent, and, I am afraid, almost the only one, that cannot be monopolized. (Applause.) And you will be surprised, and probably doubt my statement when I say that, with all due respect to the matter of conservation of our wonderful mineral deposits, the controlling of the flow of our streams, the preservation of our great forests-all of them important-we have in the atmosphere one of our greatest assets, if not the greatest asset of our continent. Humboldt has said that "Man is a product of soil and climate. He is brother to the trees, the rock and the animals." All true, but still I would slightly modify that and say that man is largely a product of climate. For it is the action of rainfall, flood and temperature changes that makes soil.

I shall try to show you that it is climatic conditions that produce this wonderful, this powerful, this resourceful composite man called the American.

I am to speak on "The Story of the Air," but before I elucidate any further, let me give you a little picture of this wonderful ocean, on the bottom of which you live.

In the turbulent stratum in which we live we have vortices in the atmosphere which cause weather. Weather is the result of the motions of air; it is the result of the dynamic heating and cooling of ascending and descending currents of air. If it were not for these vortices cooling the air and heating it, you would have precisely the same temperature on any day of one year as you would have on the same day in another You would not have one first day of June warmer than the first day of July, or the first day of December colder than the first day

year.

of January.

To demonstrate my first proposition that we have a great asset in the elima te of the United States, I call your attention to some of the conditions in Europe. Their great mountain ranges trend east and west; ours trend north and south. Cyclonic storms originate largely from conflict of equatorial and polar currents coming together. The currents of air come together in the lower straum. In Europe the great mountain ranges prevent that conflict; but not so here, with our mountain ranges running north and south. Here is the great meteorological theater of the world, the region of conflict. What is the result? A people power

ful physically and resourceful mentally. An actual air is pure and invigorating.

Now, I just have a thought that may not be germane, but it is upon my mind. I remember some years ago I wrote a report that dealt with the relations of forests and floods. Although from the inception of this movement I have been heart and soul with the people back of it, still because I do not agree with some of my friends on forestry, on the effect of forests on the flow of streams, I was classified as an enemy of the cause. I wish to say that it is a mistake to bring a fallacious reasoning to any good doctrine. I believe it is a positive injury to attempt to sustain truth by falsehood. I do not mean that anybody is wilfully untruthful -no, simply mistaken. There are so many reasons why we should conserve and protect, why we should use wisely our great forest areas, that there is no need to bring to the support of that great project anything like a reason that can be successfully attacked and refuted. I am satisfied, and as time goes on and other investigators come along and go over my data, I am thoroughly well convinced that the forests do not exert a great controlling influence over floods. I am satisfied that the percentage of floods has not increased for the past forty years. When we remove one vegetable covering like the forests, if we go on and plant, wheat, or corn, or grass, we simply exchange one form of vegetable covering for another. If we cut the forests away and leave them, they will at once begin the process of reforestation, and within a few weeks the ground is shaded. If you grub out the roots and stumps and plow, you change one form of vegetable covering for another, and the history of the United States, as well as of the world, does not bear out the statement that the floods have increased with the disappearing of the forests; nor has it been shown that any part of the world has been materially changed in its climatic conditions as a result of civilization or the coming of man. But that is no reason why the forests should not be protected and a wise use made of them.

Let us get down to facts. Just so long as the Gulf of Mexico lies down there on the south, and the great Atlantic remains on the east. just so long rainfall in the United States will be as voluminous on the great cereal plains as it was when the first white man set foot on the continent, and in its movement back to the sea the permeable, cultivated soil of the unforested acres will doubtless as well conserve and restrict its flow as the forests. We have over-estimated the effect of the littlc scratchings upon the earth's surface by the activities of man. The coming civilization of the great West is immaterial in causing an increase in rainfall. When you stop to consider the enormous volume of the atmosphere above the surface, whose vaporous contents must be materially changed and the thermal conditions altered before you can detract from the rainfall, you will realize how absurd are some popular theories. I

do not agree I radically differ from some of my contemporaries in the Department of Agriculture-but people may differ and still be friends. They may differ in regard to the details of a great movement and still not be inimical to its best interests. The man who differs and brings forth the truth is the best friend of the movement, because nothing can stand long that is not predicated on truth.

I am glad to see that in this movement your managers have brought together so many independent lines of human activity. This great movement is only at its inception. I predict that this Conservation Congress will be one of the most potent factors in the Nation for the developing and awakening of the people. You are willing now to have a free forum, to have free discussion by those of differing opinions. And at this time, Mr. President, when there is such great conflict among the forces that make for civilization, we must not only protect ourselves morally and mentally, we must with equal earnestness attempt to conserve and protect the human individual. He is the greatest asset we can have, after all. (Applause.)

A fair wage scale and reasonable hours of labor have done as much to elevate the American citizen and furnish the ties that bind him to home and State as have all the libraries and universities in the land, and I say this without any disparagement of these magnificent institutions for public good. But if you stop to think for a moment, the library can only be used by those who have a reasonable leisure to enjoy it; colleges have closed doors for those who do not receive something more than a living wage. The welfare of this Nation depends not on the accumulation of great wealth in the future; not upon the palaces on Fifth avenue or the villas at Newport. It depends upon the cultivation -upon the high average intelligence and prosperity of those who actually do the Nation's work, whether they labor with brains or with brawn. (Applause.) And right here let me say to you people who are considering these great problems, that we want brawn developed by working hours that shall not warp and distort the image of God; and we want technical and scientific teaching that shall be as free to the sons and daughters of those who work as to those who have their way paid to college. (Applause.) We must lift from the bottom in any great movement; no movement gets very far that is worked from the top down.

So I am glad to see this movement bringing into its counsels those who are affiliated with the great labor movements of organized labor. My sympathies go out to the man who works with his hands, as well as to the man who works with his brain. I thank you. (Applause.)

Chairman WHITE-Professor Moore stated he did not know why he was put down at the last end of the program. Perhaps it is not necessary to remind him that there is an old saying that the best of the wine

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