316 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



farmer is not willing to handle any other kind of live stock, he can 

 at least grow and graze mules, and that, too, with magnificent profit. 



The fact that no State has better improved cattle than the 

 State of Missouri, where the farmer has a mind to grow them, is the 

 best of proof that her soil and climate is adapted to this branch of 

 the cattle industry. The fact that sheep farming is so successfully 

 conducted by some men in your State, is sufficient proof of the 

 adaptation of your soil to that proposition. 



Growing live stock avails but little, however, unless the owner 

 hauls out the manure as conscientiously as he attends church or 

 votes his party ticket. This will maintain and increase the humus 

 content of the soil, which will enable you to put it in proper physical 

 condition, and enable you to grow crops which will take the place of 

 weeds, which are such a blemish to so many of the fair lands of your 

 State. 



If this line of farming is followed, there need be no great fear 

 of any permanent decline in the prosperity of the State of Missouri. 

 I think it possible that some of your lands are deficient in phos- 

 phorus, and this is perhaps more particularly true of the non- 

 glaciated districts. Your excellent agricultural college should be 

 able to give you advice on this question that can be followed with 

 safety and with profit. If the line of farming that I have suggested 

 is followed out, I think you will find that, whether there is enough 

 phosphorus in the soil or not, your soil will grow crops in propor- 

 tion to the raw material furnished you each season in the way of 

 heat and rain. 



I wish to warn you, however, against the indiscriminate use of 

 commercial fertilizers, and especially warn you against using them 

 at all without having a sufficient supply of humus in the soil. If 

 you expect to keep on growing com (or corn cobs in the big corn cob 

 districts) and sell this off the land, or grow wheat and sell it off the 

 land, and do nothing to maintain its physical condition, you will be 

 up against the necessity of purchasing commercial fertilizers. I still 

 further warn you that if you purchase these fertilizers and keep on 

 doing so year after year, you will be up against a worse problem ; 

 for commercial fertilizers used without some kind of vegetable mat- 

 ter in connection therewith will put your soil into worse physical con- 

 dition and make your last state worse than the first. When you 

 have occasion to use commercial fertilizers, let it always be in con- 

 nection with some kind of vegetable matter. 



Do not use any kind of commercial fertilizer unless you have 

 reason to believe, either by chemical analysis or by interrogating 



