Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1916 — HOUSTON Uncle Sam's Big Farmer [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOUSTON Uncle Sam's Big Farmer

‘TTHE SECRETARY OF AGRICUL- ] TURE MAKES DREAMS COME TRUE. HE IS A SCIENTIST WHO SCORNS GUESSWORK METHODS AND BELIEVES THAT AMERICAN FARMS OF THE FUTURE WILL BE THIS WORLD’S GARDEN SPOTS. COPYRIGHT.BY-WESTERN NEWSPAPER

By EDWARD B. CLARK.

T T OUSTON is a man who is enough to have the trut -h t°ld about him.” m *rw These were the words of a friend, a confidant and an admirer of David 7 Franklin Houston, secretary of agriculture in the cabinet of Woodrow Wilson. The secretary’s friend had no thought of small traits in the character of Mr. Houston. What he meant was that certain things which have been dwelt upon by critics of the temperament and the methods of work of Mr. Houston should be set forth so that the proper light might fall upon them and thus lay bare the facts to eye and mind. David Franklin has been criticized. Why? Well,’the answer isn’t hard. He is an idealist who believes that his idealism can be realized only after the proof has been adduced that it really is idealism. Consequently Mr. Houston is not a dreamer of dreams whose fabrics are baseless. He is of Scotch blood and is hard headed, and as a result a good many of the visionaries of the country who see glory gilding the castles which they rear in the air, cannot understand why the secretary of agriculture does not instantly see the domes and minarets of their fancy’s building “burning with the splendor of noonday.” The department of agriculture, since Mr. Houston took hold of it, has broadened the field of its endeavors. Many things have been done. Some of them are things which the dreamers of the years have urged should be done. Everything bearing a trace of the imprint of worthiness that has been suggested has been subjected to the test of critical analysis. Some of the dreamers have been disappointed because this thing or that thing has not been done, but they may 'Enow that the test has been applied and that the proof of lasting worthiness has been lacking.

There seems to be a sort of general impression that Secretary Houston is a cold man. The presumption of his coldness comes unquestionably from the fact that he is so intensely scientific and analytical. The visionaries go to him bubbling over with their dreams of what can be done to bring the millennium of their desires to farm and field. They are so convinced that the vision they have seen from the mountain tops is real that they ebunt the man who listens but declines instant and exuberant acceptance of the truth of their dreams, as a man who is cold and unresponsive. Little do they know, at any rate for a long time, that some of these dream recitals are remembered and studied and that if they bear up under the study plans are laid to make them a reality. _ Coldness is an exterior thing. A thermos bottle may be cold to the touch and yet have plenty of heat inside. The man who said that Secre-

tary Houston was big enough to have the truth told about him also said that the secretary is a volcano, a seemingly slumbering one, perhaps, but one which has within it the potentialities which one usually ascribes to Vesuvius and the other peaks of fire. Men who know the secretary cannot understand why he is called cold. The reason is simply that he is cold to the representation of things whose worth cannot be proved. There is another view of Secretary Houston which is taken by some men who do not get next to him, or perhaps better, into him. Generally speaking, a man who has no sense of humor is an impossible man. Some persons think that the secretary of agriculture lacks appreciation of real humor. While Mr. Houston is of Scotch descent, Sydney Smith’s joke about the necessity of a surgical operation before you can get a joke into a Scotchman’s skull has no application to the case of David F. Houston. He is fonder of good stories and fonder of telling them than perhaps any other man in the president’s cabinet. It is said of him, however, that, true to his temperament, he analyzes a story to find out first whether it has humor’s real ingredients before he will accept it as one worth retelling. In this way the secretary avoids the fate of the man who tells stories at which other people laugh only because they feel that they must do so in order to be complimentary to the raconteur. To a Washington correspondent who has been watching things fairly closely in the agricultural department, because of an innate liking for things agricultural, the chief thing to stand out prominently since Mr. Houston laid hand on authority is the “tremendous amplification” of works which were in little more than suggestive form when one administration of the department was succeeded by another. Secretary Houston found a lot of good things in tentative form in the agricultural department when he first entered office. He submltted the tentative projects of his predecessor to his usual analysis and those which he found good he adopted as soon as the study of them was complete. The growth of the activities of the agricultural department of the United States since Mr. Houston has taken hold is of the kind usually called phenomenal. There is no attempt on the part of the secretary or any of his subordinates to take away from preceding administrations the credit for initiative. What was found to be good has been accepted as good, and what is more, has been put into operation. Beyond this the department has initiated and carried into action many plans;of its own which at one time were thought to be impossible of success. It is ii) taking the thing said to be impossible, in testing it and in either proving or disproving its worth, that* the present secretary excels. Is it said that one is praising David

F. Houston overmuch? Well, the proof or the disproof of the validity of the praise is to be found everywhere through the farming regions of the United States. Nobody knows better than the present-day farmer what Mr. Houston has tried to do and . has done. Every housewife on the farm will make answer to the question as to whether praise has been wrongly placed or not. The records are written over every field in the United States. Their pages easily are turned and the print is large. The secretary of agriculture is a blunt man when bluntness is an essential to imparting a lesson. He does not believe in mollifying men with soft words when hard words are necessary. Politicians do not get any great amount of satisfaction out of him when they are seeking their own ends. Here is a story in point that was written by Arthur W. Page. “A member of congress from the middle West asked the secretary to get rid of the department agent who was at work in his district. The secretary refused. But that did not end the matter. A local attack hampered the work. The secretary investigated the situation, satisfied himself that the agent was not at fault, and then wrote to the member of congress that the work could not be done properly while this attack was going on, and that under the circumstances the department? would withdraw from the district altogether. “He mailed a copy of this letter to the governor of the state and to the rest of the congressional delegates from that state. They immediately' notified him that it would not be necessary to withdraw the agent The state legislature went even further, and passed a unanimous resolution indorsing the agricultural department’s work in the state.” Now it must be understood that when some members of congress cannot do what they like in the way of influencing the heads of the government departments they can resort, if they want to, to the petty revenge of opposing necessary appropriations for enlarging the good work of the department whose secretary has incensed them. Secretary Houston never seems to have worried much about the appropriation matter as it might be affected by the action of men who “knewwhat they wanted and couldn’t get it” The truth is that the motives of men usually are made plain when it corneal to antagonizing good work, and most men are afraid to have their motives turned to the sun. The result is that courageous secretaries of departments in Washington usually have no trouble because they have dared to stand out against purely 1 political importunities. David Franklin Houston was abso-j lately unknown in political circles when President Wilson called him to Washington, He was known, however,} to educators and to scientific men gen? erally all over the United States.