Horace Greeley is best known for his contribution to the abolition of human slavery in the United States. Yet his service to mankind is not fully appraised by the average American, because many of the younger generation are unaware of his aid to agriculture. His maxim about farmers' failing to till the most valuable part of their farms underneath, opening the eyes of agriculturists to the efficacy of sub-soil plowing, was the preamble to freeing American husbandry from the slavery of antiquated and unscientific methods. Following the application of science to the cultivation of the soil, came the students of Conservation. They were teaching the farmer the relation of conservation of natural resources to agriculture, the effects of forests on rainfall, moisture, erosion of soil, minimization of floods that annually bury thousands of acres of arable lands in the valleys, under rocky debris and so on. Greeley discovered the Farm Below. The Conservationists are saving the Farm Above. Now, in these days of reclamation and reconstruction, it is high time to pay more attention to the Farm by the Side of the Road. The Northern Nut Growers' Association is to be congratulated upon the fact that it is blazing the trail through the forest of popular ignorance on this vitally important conservation question; leading public thought in the right direction; and providing both the seed and the stock for practical efforts in behalf of the Farm by the Side of the Road. I am going to claim a bond of brotherhood with you in this great work, basing my claim not upon my small activities in nut cultivation, but rather upon the fact that I was one of the conservation pioneers in New York State in the advocacy of planting profitable trees--nut trees and fruit trees--along the public highways. That eminent conservationist, Gifford Pinchot, addressing the National Council of Farmers' Co-operative Associations in 1915, defined "Conservation" as "the wise use of the earth for the benefit of the people who live on it." That would be a perfect definition, if it did not invite the query: Should it not be enjoined upon the people who live upon the earth today, while enjoying its benefits, to keep faithful stewardship of the interests of the inhabitants of tomorrow? About the time Mr. Pinchot enunciated this famous definition, the New York State Conservation Department summed up the purposes of practical Conservation as: "The correction of past indiscretion, the perfection of present utilization, and the formation of future accumulation with respect to natural resources."