DAIRY MEETING. 9 1 



also settles the labor problem to a large extent. The hired men 

 are kept busy all the time in labor that counts in dollars, not on 

 those odd jobs over which they linger and from which no profit 

 shows. We complain of the labor problem but give the laborer 

 no steady work the year round. A right rotation and broader 

 farming means that a little cottage house goes up and the wife 

 of the laborer at home with her children relieves your own wife. 

 Thus attached to the farm by family, his home and regular work, 

 you come to have permanent help. I am not here to discuss 

 the labor problem but when you develop right farming the labor 

 problem in a large measure settles itself. \Mien machine farm- 

 ing is rightly developed the price of labor will not be so mate- 

 rial, as the labor cost will be in less ratio to receipts and depend 

 more upon machinery. Manufacturers do not magnify so much 

 the labor, as labor bears so small a ratio to total costs. Your 

 labor cost will not be in so large a ratio to output when you 

 perfect your methods and pay the laborer wages and can give 

 him work steadily. The trouble is with ourselves in this matter 

 as much as with labor. It is up to us to solve the problem. 



Second, tillage is manuring; manuring because it opens the 

 soil to air, oxygen, carbonic acid and other agents of decompo- 

 sition. I till four years out of eight; not four continuous 

 years because in that case the oxygen and carbonic acid would 

 dissolve the soil and form soluble plant food that we should 

 lose by leaching and volatilization. I alternate tillage with 

 cover crops, so that one helps to form plant food and provides 

 it for the next crop. I use irrigation because it carries plant 

 food upon the soil and yields it to plants, as a third source of 

 plant food. Muck, also, in connection with potash and phos- 

 phoric acid which are wanting in mucks, is used for the humus 

 and nitrogen contained. 



Then, too, fifthly, this fertilization is helped out very largely 

 by the purchase of protein foods for stock. No better illustra- 

 tion can be given, perhaps, than the results which I obtained 

 during my first year on the farm. My farm is a family inherit- 

 ance and I am there because I believe there is no place in the 

 world where the permanency of the family is so secure, morally, 

 physically and intellectually, as on the farm. And I am apply- 

 ing a labor of love, if you please, pulling rocks out, draining land 



