372 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



surprised the staid eastern farmer bj' his progressiveness. The 

 great centre of the canning business has been in Maryland, New 

 Jersey, New York and Maine; but it is rapidly passing to Illinois, 

 Iowa, Indiana and neighboring states. 



The comparison between the East and the West is neatly drawn 

 by the wife of a Kansas farmer, and I quote her words: 



''I never before realized how rapidly the western pioneer adapts 

 himself to conditions as he finds them, and the comparative ease 

 with which he achieves success with material at hand, until I visited 

 New England not long ago. 



"After less than three days' travel, \yhat a wonderful change. I 

 had known no home but one on the broad prairies of Kansas, with 

 great fields of wheat, corn, alfalfa, and open ranges. To alight on 

 a 'down east" farm, with its little checker-board fields on hillsides 

 and in hollows, gave an impression I shall never forget. It does not 

 seem possible that those miniature fields represents hard labor; but 

 there is a 100-acre Tarm which stands for four generations of toil. 

 One day the owmer and I walked to the edge of a v,'ooded hill back 

 of the meadow. He was lamenting that his boys had left the old 

 farm for the village. 'The boys,' he said, 'got so many new-fangled 

 notions into their heads while they were at school that I couldn't 

 run the farm to suit them. They wanted me to plant berries where 

 I always had the buckwheat; w^anted to change the buckwheat field 

 from where it's always been. They w^anted everything changed 

 around. They wouldn't even call it farming. They talked to me 

 about agriculture, and thought they know more than their old 

 father. Why, they had three or four long names for just plain mud, 

 and talked about rotating crops. I told them there wasn't going 

 to be any rotating while I owned that buckwheat field. So they 

 just rotated off to the village.' 



"We walked on, and presently came to a piece of waste swamp 

 land at the foot of a hill, which could easily be tiled and drained. 

 'What are you going to do with this black muck?' I asked. 'Do with 

 it? Why, nothing, but just keep out of it,' he replied. 'But,' said I, 

 'it is the richest land on the farm. Can't yoii grow something on 

 it? 'Never tried,' he retorted. 'Your grandpa never did anything 

 with it, only to watch and see that none of the cows broke out of 

 the hill x)asture and got stuck in the mire.' 'Uncle Timothy,' said I. 

 'this is ideal celery ground. ]\Iake a tile drain through the meadow 

 to the creek. You can soon drain this bog. Then prepare it for a 

 celery field, and you will just be an up-to-date farmer.' I was really 

 enthused, for the black muck seemed to hold such wonderful possi- 

 bilities. Rut Uncle Timothy turned and looked me over for a full 

 minute before he found his speech, and then said: 'I swan, Betsy, 

 you surprise mo. Thorn's some of vour Kansas notions. I don't 



