854 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off, DOG. 



ing, as men who improve by experience are enabled to perform better 

 work and to give more satisfactory service, yet the words of the 

 distinguished statesman who judged the future by the past may give 

 us the key to the situation as to the future uses and development 

 of the silo. 



As one studies the history of the silo in the United States he 

 cannot fail to be impressed with the idea that man makes many 

 mistakes in dealing with the unknown. When the silo was first 

 placed before" the American people as a means of satisfactorily 

 preserving forage crops, its advantages were set forth and even 

 highly lauded without announcing the disadvantages, objections 

 and even dangers, besetting the advent of the new custom. As 

 with many other new inventions, we heard a one-sided report only. 

 The newspapers and other publications set forth the advantages 

 v.'ithout presenting objections. It is possible, however, that the 

 most serious ones mav not have been known at that time. However, 

 the interested agriculturists were evidently over-confident. Those 

 who have studied the people of various nations recognize that the 

 American people are intensive, eager to improve, willing to take 

 risks, and even make great sacrifices in order to achieve distinction 

 and advancement. Consequently we should not be surprised to 

 find the existing conditions pertaining to many new things com- 

 paratively unstable and changing. American people without doubt 

 stand in marked contrast to the older European nations as regards 

 the eagerness with .which new enterprises are taken up and old 

 habits and appliances discarded. The Englishman and the German 

 adhere to the old with contentment. The former accepts new 

 inventions from this country, which he calls ''The /Yankee' patent 

 things," as the onv/ard march of progress compels him to accept 

 them. In America, however, many new things are tried, some of 

 v/hich are failures, but the trial enables the farmer to select the 

 worthy and to reject that which is unfit for his use. Many farmers 

 who have had comparatively little knowledge of silos or of feeding 

 silage have constructed silos in an endeavor to make silage an im- 

 portant part, and in some cases the major part of the ration of 

 various classes of domestic animals. Failures have resulted; ex- 

 pensive lessons have been learned. Not only did these farmers not 

 know how to harvest and preserve most efiiciently and cheaply, but 

 they did not understand how to feed to the best advantage that 

 which they had preserved. Consequently, the silos have been 

 praised and condemned as their uses have been advantageous or 

 detrimental. The silo has been the means of furnishing examples 

 of both extremes — failure and success. Some who maintained that 

 only a good crop of corn and the silo were necessary have learned 

 bitter lessons when they have attempted to maintain on silage alone 



