the results are surprising.” 81“It does not, I presume, apply solely to cotton-growing?” 81 “Certainly not; on the contrary, one of our great objects is to break down the exclusive reliance on cotton so common in many districts, and to show how the exhaustion of land may be avoided by the judicious rotation of crops. In short, we aim at providing object-lessons in scientific agriculture all over the Southern States, and of course always with strict reference to the particular advantages and disadvantages of a district. I assure you the South is at the opening of a new agricultural era; and it will not be many years before our work will produce a marked effect on education. Come back ten years hence, and you will no longer find it true that the Southern school is open, on an average, only about three months in the year; that the Southerner gets, on an average, something less than three years’ schooling in his whole life; and that about 10 per cent. of the native-born white population of the Southern States is wholly illiterate, and about 40 per cent. of the negro population. We are going to change all that.” Shortly afterwards I met, not Dr. Knapp himself, but his son, Mr. Arthur Knapp, who gave me some further information as to the new era in Southern agriculture. “Not only,” he said, “is much Southern land unimproved, but much of it is exhausted by careless 82and ignorant cultivation. It has been the method of many Southern farmers to work their land until it would no longer raise a paying crop of cotton; then to sell their farms for what they could get and move on to fresher soil. The system of Demonstration Farms will put an end to this, along with many other abuses and stupidities. It is the only sound method of educating the farmer. You may deluge him with Government bulletins of printed advice without producing the slightest effect. Even if he reads and understands the advice, he can’t or won’t apply it in practice. You must show him the process and show him the results. Much more is done by talking than by reading in the South; things circulate from mouth to mouth much more effectually than even through the newspapers. Each of the 12,000 Demonstration Farms is visited by from thirty to one hundred neighbouring farmers. That means that the object-lessons reach something like 400,000 every year. And then the spirit of emulation is awakened. Intelligent and energetic men are fired with the idea that they will beat the Government; and they go off and have a very good try.”
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