reference to taxes is liable to be misunderstood. However, I think it can be shown that the railroads in California are overtaxed in comparison with other states. The Santa Fé Railroad has 12.8 per cent of its mileage in California and yet it pays 18.6 per cent of its total taxes here. When the present method of taxing was adopted a rate was fixed that would give about the same total amount that had previously been paid. Every time, however, that additional revenues were needed they could be obtained by adding just a little to the taxes of the railroads. But do you realize, gentlemen, that an increase of only one-half of 1 per cent in the rate on gross income means an increase of 10 per cent in our total taxes? This process has gone on until now the burden is greater than it should be, for not only do our taxes increase as our gross increases but you increase the rate. I know it is the boast of California that its taxing methods throw the burden of taxation on the corporations and, therefore, there is no objection to increasing the rates, but in the final analysis the people pay the rates that pay the taxes. Please remember this in future consideration of tax matters.

I will only mention labor organization troubles because this is something in which you cannot help us, except to give us your sympathy. There is also the personal injury, law suit evil, where it becomes a fashion to find a verdict against a railroad company simply because it is a railroad. I might go on indefinitely but the instances I have given show the results that have come from the sentiment and feeling that exists toward railroads.

There are certain laws that have been definitely established by long centuries of experience as giving the greatest good to the greatest number, as, for instance, the right to ownership in property; but there are other laws not so well established. In the past hundred years there have sprung up many new and complex combinations of interests for which society has not yet defined the exact rules and, therefore, laws are continually being passed to try to establish definitely the boundaries that shall mark the rights and the efforts of each, and the laws are, to a large extent, experimental, due to the unconscious influence of self interest in our law making bodies, due to lack of ability to look ahead and see the ultimate outcome of any particular line of action and due to lack of knowledge of what has been tried in the past. This will explain why actions that are lawful in one state are perhaps unlawful in another; why what is right one day may be counted wrong the next. So it has been with our laws dealing with the railroad problem and with our sentiments toward the railroads.

We felt, at first, that no matter what rates were charged that we could stand them if we could only get the railroads. We then

reached the conclusion that the rates were too high and that unlimited competition was needed to control this feature, and we gave aid and encouragement to every railroad that asked for it. This led to the competition we desired, but other evils at once manifested themselves, such as lower rates to larger shippers. We finally stopped the discrimination by requiring that all rates be published, but we also absolutely stopped competition in rates; for what road would name a lower rate when its rival would at once meet it, leaving as the only effect of the lowered rate less income for both. We then turned to competition by water. We gave government aid to waterways and we are today pouring yearly into our waterways millions and millions of useless expenditures. You, in California, urged the Panama Canal. I know that from a railroad man a statement that money spent in waterways-yes, in the Panama Canal-is economically a mistake, will not carry much weight, just at present, but I make the assertion boldly and will trust to time to convince you. Have you ever realized that the charges for water service would be higher than those on the railroad if they were based on the actual cost of the improvements, or, that on the other hand, the rates on the railroads could be less than they are on the water if the entire interest and maintenance of the railroads should be absorbed by the government? Have you ever realized that the railroads employ more men than can possibly be employed by water routes and that the number of people employed in your midst is a direct element in the prosperity of a country? Have you ever considered that the fostering of waterways turns from the railroad the tonnage which is the one absolute requirement to enable low rates and that you thus deprive them of the power to give the service that is necessary for the best development of agriculture? All these things should be taken into account and have been too little considered in the past in the making of our laws and in our feelings toward the railroad problem.

You can thus see how we, in this country, are floundering. We are, however, learning slowly but surely, and gradually we will rectify the mistakes we have made. It should be one of the functions of an institution such as we have in Berkeley to help in this evolution, to point out the pitfalls of the past and so to teach that the full relationship of man to man in all endeavor may be clearly seen. In the teachings that will go forth from this temple which we are dedicating today let it be shown that the railroad is the twin brother of agriculture, that in considering what is best for one we must consider the interest of the other, that regulation does not mean strangulation; that unlimited competition may become destructive competition and that a low freight rate is not the panacea for all the troubles of the farmer.

PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF FARM PRODUCTS

STODDARD JESS

Life should be measured by achievement, rather than by the passing of time. It is what a man does, what he accomplishes, that counts, and not how long he lives.

True life is service, and service is the only thing in life that is self-satisfying and that abides. The satisfaction which comes from doing things that make for the welfare of others and for the betterment of the world, brings us true happiness. A man who has added to the efficiency of mankind, by unlocking the secrets of nature, even in small degree, has not lived in vain. Civilization itself represents the accumulative results of the discoverer and the inventor.

It is fitting and proper that we should be gathered here today the dedicate this hall of learning to the greatest of all sciences, the science of agriculture, and in the name of one of its noblest and most consecrated workers, Professor Hilgard, a man who faithfully did his full share in laying the foundation for the intelligent development of the horticultural and agricultural resources of our great state of California.

It is gratifying to note the spirit of liberality shown by the legislative bodies and the executive of our state toward this great institution of learning, under the charge and supervision of one of the greatest educators of the present day, aided by an able corps of assistants. It is a compliment to the head of this great institution and to his coworkers that such marked attention is being given to the upbuilding and support of the Department of Agriculture, giving the opportunity for every young man and every young woman in the state to acquire up-to-date, scientific, practical knowledge in handling every department of husbandry.

The prosperity of the farmer is the chief cornerstone in the prosperity of the state. All industries in both peace and war rest upon it. Daniel Webster says "The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity." Franklin says:

There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second is by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third is by agriculture the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

Our greatest need is higher efficiency in making and marketing the products of the farm. With the great acreage of arable lands

in California, put to its highest use, and managed with proper efficiency, the state would not only produce practically everything needed for the consumption of its people, but would receive for its surplus, returns that would make it the most productive state in the Union, and the most productive section in the world. With such great diversity of soil and climatic conditions, with water abundant for irrigating purposes, both from gravity supply and by pumping from inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs underlying our great central valleys, California would not suffer for any of the necessities or luxuries of life, if all communication were cut off from the outside world. Lack of intelligent and properly organized effort is the only answer to the query, why California imports meat and meat products, flour and cereals, sugar, and many other products, that can be grown as well within the state as outside of it.

The success of the farmer requires a proper understanding of his mission as a farmer. He should know that his first duty is to produce everything that is needed for the support of his family that he can produce on his farm, devoting the part of his land remaining to the production of such crops as it may be best adapted to raise, with due reference, of course, to the laws of supply and demand. The tendency of the farmer today is to specialize and grow only one thing, encouraged to do so by the speculative feature connected with it, the hope of a big crop and a big price. In such cases a loss of crop means the loss of a year's efforts and all too frequently results in incurring indebtedness that proves a future burden. Diversity of product lessens the dangers attending the loss of any one crop. Diversity of products makes for efficiency in labor, by allowing the farmer to do his work more within himself and consequently to be less dependent on hired help. The farmer who produces what his family consumes, buys of himself and sells to himself, thus saving two profits, which he would otherwise have to pay to the middleman. The farmer who produces what his family consumes lives better, because he produces many things that he would not feel justified in buying.

The success of the farmer demands that he understand the desirability of the rotation of crops. The wheat farmers of the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys cropped their lands with wheat year after year, until those qualities in the soil that produced wheat were exhausted, until their fields might more appropriately have been called foxtail pastures than fields of wheat. It should be considered a crime to allow a field of alfalfa to stand longer than three years from the time it is seeded. It should then be plowed up to furnish succeeding crops with the fertilizer contained

in the alfalfa roots left to decay in the ground. Wherever clover can be successfully grown, the strength and quality of soil can be maintained by the proper rotation of crops.

The success of the farmer depends in no small degree on the care and intelligence shown in the selection of seed. To plant the same seed grown year after year on the same ground, is not best. Seed wheat, barley, potatoes, etc., secured from places remote from where they are to be planted, frequently show increased vigor of growth, with much greater yield, than from home grown seed. To plant all the kernels of corn on a cob was the common practice, until it was discovered and actually demonstrated that to remove the small kernels from the end of the ear, and the big kernels from the butt, and only plant the remaining kernels on the ear, resulted in a marked increase in yield. It was considered right and proper to sort out the small potatoes, and cut off the seed end of the larger ones, for planting purposes, until it was discovered that with potatoes, as with many other things, like produces like, and if you want to dig a potato of a certain shape and size, plant a potato of that certain shape and size.

The success of the farmer engaged in dairying, demands definite knowledge as to the butter fat producing quality of every cow in his stanchions. The success of the farmer engaged in producing pork, demands that he understand the necessity of maturing his pigs for market before they are ten months old. We are hearing more frequently the term "baby beef" applied to young animals slaughtered before they are a year old and weighing eight to nine hundred pounds. It may be that the beef producer who takes two years to mature an animal will be ridiculed in the future as is the man who keeps a hog until it is two years old before selling it.

Another question of equal importance to the success of the farmer is the disposition of his products. Without a stable market, insuring fairly remunerative prices, there is no incentive to produce. California producers have probably suffered more from lack of satisfactory marketing conditions than the producers of any other section of the United States.

The producers of wheat and barley in California have never been offered a market that would allow them to drive up to warehouse with a certainty of receiving a price within a certain number of cents per cental of the day's price at seaports, as has always been the case in all sections east of the Rocky Mountains. Thirty years ago the marketing of grain and hay in California was largely a matter of barter between the producer and the man who was willing to buy, and it is so today in a large degree. The producer had to sell to secure funds to pay his current expenses. As the result