194 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



though prices rule about the same. The advantage of farm ma- 

 chinery does not equal the additional cost of living, and we are 

 drifting more deei)ly in debt. We cannot, vi'ith our higher educa- 

 tion, return to the manner of living of that period, nor would it be 

 desirable. Then not one man in twenty had an overcoat, and one 

 pair of shoes was the allowance of a growing boy or girl for win- 

 ter's use. When they were worn out, we went barefooted. All 

 classes were economical. My grandmother's story may illustrate 

 it. On Sundays they would walk within sight of the church, carry- 

 ing their shoes, and on returning home would remove them. In all 

 departments of the household this rigid economy was enforced. 

 Money was made and farms paid for by savings. All labor was 

 manual. It was work every day; women worked in the fields with 

 their husbands and children; besides doing the household duties. 



My father, for that period, was a prosperous farmer. He kept a 

 dairy farm of 40 rows. My mother milked ten of them daily; she 

 considered it no hardship — it was the custom of the country. All 

 rode on horseback. There were no wagons for pleasure; even in 

 1855 there were no covered wagons in the prosperous Lycoming 

 Creek valley. Three minutes gait was a fast horse and 2.40, phenom- 

 enal. One hundred dollars would buy the pick of horses. These 

 were the good old times to which distance lends enchantment. 



The grain merchants in Philadelphia made corners in wheat at 

 their option, from the Susquehanna and Lebanon Valley products. 

 These were sold from the farms and a legacy of exhausted lands was 

 left. By the judicious usp of lime, fertilizer and rotation of crops, 

 some of its wasted fertility was restored, yet we cannot compete 

 with the virgin west in cereals. We have our farms and a crushing 

 competition with the incubus of indebtedness. 



The question that interests us beyond anything, is how we can 

 make farms remunerative and keep our children interested in the 

 farm and farm life. We cannot recede into the ways of the past; 

 nor is it necessary, as we have a higher intelligence which we must 

 use to lead us into ways that are profitable and pleasant. We must 

 have larger crops of farm products. We must plow less ground and 

 make the land more productive, raise better crops, more cattle and 

 make more manure and take better care of it. Accepting the fact 

 that we cannot compete with the great west in cereals is no reason 

 why we should not raise them; but, instead of selling them at these 

 ruinous prices, have enough cows, pigs and poultry to consume them, 

 marketing them and their products, reserving their excreta to be 

 restored again to the farm in the shape of well decomposed manure, 

 neither leeched nor burnt. In either case, we have only organized 

 matter instead of highly nitrogenized ]ilnnt food. 



The ammonia we see escaping from freshly cleaned horse stables 



