270 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



in our own country has been a history of the exhaustion of the soil 

 and a constant decrease in the average yield per acre. As the tide of 

 immigration has swept over the United States from the Atlantic to 

 the Rocky Mountains, it has, by too constant cropping of the soil in 

 wheat, left behind it a country in which wheat culture is the least 

 profitable occupation of the farmer. It has left behind it a soil ex- 

 hausted of the natural ingredients of wheat — of the necessary elements 

 of successful wheat culture. Why, sir, from the soil of this district 

 has been produced this year five hundred thousand tons of wheat, 

 and there will probably be shipped four hundred thousand tons from 

 the district to Europe. Has this great crop taken nothing from the 

 fertility of the soil ? As well might it be asserted that from a gallon 

 measure of milk you could pour a half gallon and still have a gallon 

 of pure milk in the measure. The four hundred thousand tons of 

 wheat will go from your district to Europe, and with it will as cer- 

 tainly go from your soil the necessary ingredients to produce just 

 four hundred thousand tons of wheat, and unless you return to your 

 farms, in some way, some of the ingredients extracted from them by 

 this crop, your district will be just the value of this wheat the poorer 

 as a wheat-growing district. 



The importance of this subject has betrayed me into so extended a 

 discussion of it that I shall be compelled to omit much that I intended 

 to say upon the means of keeping up the fertility of the soil where 

 wheat culture must necessarily be for many years the principal occu- 

 pation of farmers. Our climate will not allow the practice of rotation 

 of crops so successfully adopted in countries where a high tempera- 

 ture and moisture are united. We cannot plow in our straw, because 

 it will not rot; we cannot resort to root crops, because they will not 

 grow successfully on our dry wheat land ; but we can raise stock to 

 consume the straw and return it to the soil. We can produce, alter- 

 nately, a crop of wheat and a crop of beef and butter, or mutton and 

 wool, or pork and lard, and in this way we can not only make more 

 money for ourselves in the long run, but what is equally as important, 

 we can leave our children a valuable inheritance — a country worth 

 having. 



The time and mode of harvesting our wheat, Mr. President, is a 

 matter of much greater importance than is generally supposed. It 

 has been considered one of California's chief advantages, as a wheat- 

 growing State, that her dry Summer climate favored the plan of 

 allowing wheat to remain standing till it had become so ripe and dry 

 that it could be cut with a header, and thrashed and stacked 

 immediately without danger of heating and molding. That consid- 

 erable is gained by this practice in the economy of handling the 

 grain, and avoiding the handling of large bulks of straw, is evident, 

 but have we not been losing in another way more than we have gained 

 by this practice? There is a certain stage of ripeness or maturity 

 when wheat has gained its greatest weight and best quality, and if 

 cut at this stage, with the full length of straw, and allowed to remain 

 in the straAV in a position to harden up gradually, this weight and 

 quality become fixed so as never to be lost. But if the grain be cut 

 before this proper condition has been attained, the kernels shrink 

 and wilt, and the meat or flour-making substance becomes tough and 

 leathery, and there is a great loss both in weight and flour-making 

 and food- producing qualities. The effect of cutting wheat too green 

 is similar to that produced on the apple by plucking it from the tree 



