The importance of such movements cannot be over-estimated; and through such intelligent joint action it will be possible to improve the market just as much as the farm.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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I heartily believe in farmers’ organizations; and we should all welcome every step taken towards an increasing co-operation among farmers.
I hope that things will so shape themselves that the farmer can have a great career and yet end his life as a farmer; so that the city man will look forward to living in the country rather than the country man to living in the city.
We cannot re-create what is dead; we cannot stop the march of events; but we can direct this march, and out of the new conditions develop something better than the past knew.
It often happens that the good conditions of the past can be regained, not by going back, but by going forward.
But it is rather sad to see that in recent years most of these same boys have ended their lives as men living in cities.
Turning to the list of American statesmen, it is extraordinary to see how large a proportion started as farm boys.
From the beginning of time it has been the man raised in the country—and usually the man born in the country—who has been most apt to render the services which every nation most needs.
Our people as a whole should realize the infinite possibilities of life in the country; and every effort should be made to make these possibilities more possible.
The farmer, however, must not only make his land pay, but he must make country life interesting for himself and for his wife and his sons and daughters.
The growth has been astounding, and land only fifty miles from New York, which during our entire National lifetime has been treated as worthless, has within the last three or four years been proved to possess a really high value.
While there should undoubtedly be such a training as a foundation (the extent differing according to the kind of work each boy intends to do as a man), it is nevertheless true that our educational system should more and more be turned in…
In just the same way the farmers should benefit by the advice of the technical men who have been trained in phases of the very work the farmer does.
The big business man, the big railway man, does not ask college-trained experts to tell him how to run his business; but he does ask numbers of them each to give him expert advice and aid on some one point indispensable to his business.
From railways to factories no great industrial concern can nowadays be carried on save by the aid of a swarm of men who have received a high technical education in chemistry, in engineering, in electricity, in one or more of scores of…
One reason why the great business men of to-day—the great industrial leaders—have gone ahead, while the farmer has tended to sag behind the others, is that they are far more willing, and indeed eager, to profit by expert and technical…
But I wish to insist to you here—to you practical men, who own and work your farms—that it is an equally pernicious absurdity for the practical man to refuse to benefit by the work of the student.
The human side of the rural life problem is to make the career of the farmer and the career of the farm laborer as attractive and as remunerative as corresponding careers in the city.
The problem consists in the growth of the city at the expense of the country; and, even where this is not the case, in so great an equality of growth in power and interest as to make the city more attractive than the country, and therefore…
But very fortunately we see now what never before was seen in any civilization—an aroused and alert public interest in the problem, a recognition of its gravity and a desire to attempt its solution.
In consequence, in the past, every civilization in its later stages has tended really to witness those conditions under which “the cities prosper and the men decay.” There are ugly signs that these tendencies are at work in this nation of…
Up to a certain point the city movement is thoroughly healthy; yet it is a strange and lamentable fact that always hitherto after this point has been reached the city has tended to develop at the expense of the country by draining the…
Therefore the conservation and rural life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought…
In the same way it is essential for the farmers themselves to try to broaden the life of the man who lives in the open country; to make it more attractive; to give it every adjunct and aid to development which has been given to the life of…
All our industrial and commercial welfare, all our material development of every kind, depends in the last resort upon our preserving and increasing the fertility of the soil.
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