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Show (Kele.tsed by Western Newspaper Union.) CHE.Ml'RGY A.VIJ AMERICAN FARMS SOME 30 years ago, James Hill proposed a method (or increasing American farm production. At that time we had a foreign market for the surplus of all of our farm products. prod-ucts. The Hill proposal resulted in the enactment of legislation for the employment of an agricultural scientist sci-entist in each county in the United States the county agent. The plan worked. These trained experts, placed by state agricultural experiment stations, carried scientific scien-tific agricultural methods direct to the farmer and applied them directly direct-ly to each individual farm. We had a market for our increased in-creased farm production through, and for, two or three years after the close of the first World war. When we stopped lending European nations na-tions money with which to buy, they stopped buying and the American farmer sufTered. We will not again have a farm market capable of absorbing all of our potential farm products until we can find new uses for those products, or produce those things for which new uses can be found. Industry must come to the relief of the American farm by a utilization utiliza-tion of those things that can be produced on the farm, as well as by a utilization of those things that now are considered farm waste. It is through the comparatively new science of Chemurgy that these things can be, and are being, accomplished, ac-complished, thanks very largely to the efforts of one man, Wheeler Mc-Millen. Mc-Millen. Mr. McMillen is urging the enactment enact-ment of legislation that will provide for investigations of new crops which can be grown in the United States, and also for new industrial uses for crops now grown on our farms or from the present waste from these crops. To the agricultural committee commit-tee of the house of representatives, Mr. McMillen recently made the statement that of the 300,000 known species of plants, not more than 500 are known to have commercial value. val-ue. He said that of the many vegetable vege-table products imported from foreign for-eign countries and of which we pro now suffering a severe shortage, most of them could be produced . from crops that can be grown on American farms. Mr. McMillen sees agriculture the next great expanding industry in the United States, with opportunities opportuni-ties for every small farmer, and in this he sees a safeguard for the American philosophy of gove ment. AMERICAN SYSTEM GIVES ALL A CHANCE GOVERNMENT CAN PROVIDE, as our Constitution says, equal opportunity, op-portunity, for every man. Government Govern-ment cannot provide equal ability, initiative, the will to succeed or energy en-ergy with which to pursue success. Government can so discourage initiative ini-tiative and ability a,s to make the achievement of success almost, if not entirely impossible. By doing so, it does not raise the standard of the incapable, Btrt by limiting the activities of the capable, will lower the standards of all. Henry Ford was born with no more opportunity than were millions mil-lions of other men, but few had the ability, initiative, the will to succeed suc-ceed and the energy of Ford. With these qualities, he achieved a success suc-cess that has been beneficial to the people of the nation. Directly and indirectly, that success has created hundreds of thousands of jobs. It has made homes and the comfortable comforta-ble support of families possible. It has provided markets for the farmers' farm-ers' products. It has raised materially ma-terially the living standard of all America. When Henry Ford is gone, what he has created will continue. I knew two farmers who settled on adjoining claims in Nebraska. Each had the same number of acres, the same soil, the same rain and the same sunshine. They had equal opportunity. One succeeded, the other failed. One had ability and energy, the other did not. Three men of my acquaintance, three brothers, were educated at the same university. Each had equal opportunity. One became an efficient, successful business executive. execu-tive. The other two became clerks. There was a difference in the ability, abili-ty, initiative and energy one, or all of these, attributes to success. The success of no individual benefits bene-fits only himself. It is the cumulative cumula-tive results of success which cause us to prosper as a people. It is success that creates wealth and jobs. The success of one does not condemn another to the morass of poverty and want. It raises the general gen-eral standard of all. SOYBEANS TODAY WE MAKE automobile upholstery, automobile steering wheels, and other parts of the cars we drive, out of soy beans. In 1914, we produced only 2,000 bushels of soy beans, but because of a market created by industrial demand, that increased to 106,000.000 bushels in 1941, and this year the government is asking for a 50 per cent increase in that very profitable crop. That is one of the things the organic chemist has done for American agriculture. |
