INDIANA HOETICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 569 



special training. I want to tell you of a young man who linew how to 

 talie care of cattle, and his services were engaged by a rich man on a 

 fine farm, and he was very successful. In a short time the interests of 

 the owner were drifted entirely away from the farm, and he could not 

 dispose of it in the way he wanted to. So this young man got an op- 

 portunity to buy the pure-bred cattle at a low price, and this was cer- 

 tainly a great opportunity. This was on account of his special training. 

 I fear we neglect our opportunities. You can read in papers and boolis 

 where someone Mill tell how he can put on two hundred pounds of 

 beef, and another four hundred pounds of beef from the acre of grass 

 during the season. This, of course, was done by people who had had 

 special training. These things are interesting, and we live in our own 

 possibilities in this State of Indiana. 



I want to- tell you about a young man who studied in an agricultural 

 school. He was not so very young, for he was about thirty-five years 

 of age. He found that he was getting a good deal from his experience, 

 because it enabled him to cut double. He did not come with the inten- 

 tion of staying the full time, but when he went home and found how 

 much he had really learned he went bacli to the school for the full course, 

 and graduated when he was thirty-eight or nine. That man is now rais- 

 ing every year four or five thousand range lambs, mostly upon rape, 

 which he plants with his corn. He is doing this year after year, and his 

 lambs top the marliet in Chicago. Isn't this a wonderful use of the acre 

 — that ability to make an acre bring you the very last dollar of profit? 

 This special training gives additional power, and we all need it. Who 

 has money enough? Certainly no farmer. "We want more money from 

 our acre. I linow a young man who happened to fall heir to some 

 land that was very thin. It was not a very promising place on which 

 to begin farming. He was a graduate, and of course had this special 

 training, so he thought the matter over carefully and found that his land 

 was well adapte'd to melon raising, so he began to raise melons. He sup- 

 plied the market with melons and cabbage. In about six years that 

 man had saved enough money to build him a house, and he now has a 

 more comfortable farm. He has a wife who was instructed in domestic 

 science. This man knew that melons would be profitable and could be 

 raised well, and he knew this on account of his special training — the 

 very training which he got from within the agricultural school— for this 

 training gave him an insight into the subject and an enthusiasm for 

 it, and this, backed by advice and counsel of older people, caused him 

 to make a wonderful success. Now many have the acre and many have 

 the special energy that we can put in these different lines. There is 

 so much to be said along this line of the acre, and that is the point 

 from which we should estimate everything we do on the farm — "the 

 acre." 



I wish to speak briefly about some other phases of this subject. 



