SECRETARY'S REPORT. ."Sll 



stimulants, though perhaps sometimes necessary to arouse mor- 

 bid inaction, they are of more than questionable utility as a sta- 

 ple article of diet, cither for individuals or for the common- 

 wealth. 



It is not proposed to enlarge upon what may or may not be 

 the proper and legitimate scope of legislation, cither of the 

 State or of the General Government, in behalf of agriculture. 

 That an interest of so vastly greater magnitude than any other, 

 is entitled to the fostering aid and care of government, cannot 

 be doubted. While commerce and manufactures, the one busied 

 in exchange of products, and the other in modifying their form, 

 demand and receive governmental aid, surely the producing in- 

 terest, not only paramount to all others, but upon which all other 

 interests depend, should not be forgotten. However doubtful 

 may be the expediency of some of the means or modes pro- 

 posed, it would seem that there can be no question as to efforts 

 for the diffusion of knowledge, whether by furnishing educa- 

 tional facilities, adapted to the profession of agriculture, by 

 the dissemination of printed matter, or in any other feasible 

 mode. 



To see how readily, effectually, and practically this may op- 

 erate, let us look at a single instance. Nobody doubts that an 

 iudispensible requisite to successful farming is an adequate sup- 

 ply of manure to feed the crops. It is equally certain that not 

 less than one-half of the fertilizing materials on the farms of 

 the State is lost or wasted, for lack of knowledge as to their 

 proper management. Now let the farmers learn fully the use 

 of barn cellars, absorbents, and other means of saving, and also 

 the value of the thousands of tons of decayed vegetable matter 

 which they possess in the form of muck or peat, when properly 

 treated, and the manure saved or made would at once be more 

 than doubled, and productiori correspondiiigly increased. Reck- 

 oning this increase at only an average of one hundred dollars 

 to each of the forty-six thousand farms of the State, (who can 

 doubt that if the means of fertilization were doubled, the value 

 of increased products would exceed this sum ?) and there appears 

 to be a substantial addition to the property of the common- 

 wealth, in the sum of four millions six hundred thousand dollars, 

 and this not for once only, but as easily repeated every year. 



