DAIRY MEETING. 85 



growing in favor with me as the days go by. Some of you have 

 already heard me speak on this subject, but as it is to me the 

 pivotal problem of farming, perhaps it will do no harm to 

 repeat myself. 



Crop production of the farm is the question of questions. It 

 is the under girder of the whole superstructure of sucessful 

 farming. The primary function of farming is crop production, 

 and the measure of intelligence that is put into it is the measure 

 of the crop output, and it is not only the measure of the possi- 

 bility of farm success, but is the measure of the progress of the 

 State itself, because upon it rests all wealth. I feel that in New 

 England the fathers are not quite equaling the courage of the 

 sons which they have sent to the West, who have learned to 

 farm broadly. I feel that they are not the equal, in breadth of 

 action, of their sons who go to the cities and become masters of 

 great enterprises. I feel that they are not matching in broad 

 purpose the farmers of the Old World, where, on the British 

 farms, the renter handles sometimes as high as 400 acres and 

 applies capital and energies on a broad scale, reaping often 45 

 and 50 bushels of wheat to the acre, and other crops in propor- 

 tion. In my mind the farmer who is surrounded by the condi- 

 tions that ought to call him out at his best, but who is at his 

 poorest, is the farmer of New England. Our farms of 150 acres, 

 at least, are not comparable with the farms of our sons in the 

 West, of 160 acres, because every acre of these farms is farm- 

 ing land. Our farms measuring up to the western sections of 

 160 acres, contain really about 35 or 40 acres of actual tillage 

 land. Our farmers are farming on the low level of a ton of 

 hay to the acre, a crop far below the intellectual capacity of the 

 men of New England. When I talk to our farmers in New 

 England, I feel like saying with Carlisle, "The best that is in 

 thee, in God's name, out with it !" I have asked many a farmer 

 in the State of Maine during the last two weeks that I have 

 been around with your very able Commissioner of Agriculture, 

 what is the number of the cows of his herd. The answer has 

 been ten or twenty cows, perhaps an average of 12 to 15, or 

 generally not more than ten. Mr. Merrill tells me that the 

 creameries of Maine average 167 pounds of butter per cow. 

 That is getting down pretty definitely to the producing power 



