ignorance!'"

"Why wasn't the matter investigated sooner?" asked Miss Russell.
"Why didn't the government find out what the land needed long
before?"

"I am a Yankee," said Percy. "Why have American statesmen ridden
back and forth to the national capitol through a wilderness of
depleted and abandoned farms in the eastern states for half a
century or more before the first appropriation was made for the
purpose of agricultural investigation? and why, even now, does not
this rich federal government appropriate to the agricultural
experiment station in every state a fund at least equal to the
aggregate salaries of the congressmen from the same state, this fund
to be used exclusively for the purpose of discovering and
demonstrating profitable systems of permanent agriculture on every
type of soil? Why do we as a nation expend five hundred million
dollars annually for the development of the army and navy, and only
fifteen millions for agriculture, the one industry whose ultimate
prosperity must measure the destiny of the nation?

"Moralists sometimes tell us that the fall of the Babylonian Empire,
the fall of the Egyptian Empire, of the Grecian Empire, and the
Roman Empire, were all due to the development of pride and
immorality among those peoples; whereas, we believe that
civilization tends rather toward peace, security, and higher
citizenship. Is not the chief explanation for the ultimate and
successive fall of those great empires to be found in the exhausted
or wasted agricultural resources of the country?