1884.] QUESTIONS. 121 



sion to hoe or cultivate but once, and I have never found it 

 inconvenient or destructive to the crop. The weeds that 

 remain will be very few, if any. I have raised as high as 600 

 bushels of potatoes to the acre in this way, without any ferti- 

 lizers. I plant my potatoes in drills rather than in hills, 

 because we turn over the furrow. 



The labor question has been spoken of. That is a problem, 

 and I hardly know how it can be settled. Farm help is not, 

 as every gentleman knows, what it was twenty years ago. It 

 is constantly changing, and our work is now mostly done by 

 foreign laborers. The question of making this class of labor- 

 ers a part of our familie is a difficult problem to solve. 

 Whom does the farmer employ for his help to-day ? Is it the 

 class of men whom he would employ twenty years ago — men 

 whom he wants to take into his family ? Why, it has been 

 said, and I think very justly, the farm laborer is often a for- 

 eigner, perfectly ignorant of the business which we entrust to 

 him, and probably of the domestic relations. It is a very 

 grave question whether a man wants to hug one of them to 

 his bosom as a companion. 



The Chairman. I have some figures which I would like to 

 give to this meeting at this time, showing what can be done 

 by thorough cultivation. Learning some three weeks ago 

 that a gentleman in New London had been very successful in 

 raising celery, I wrote him asking him to send me the figures 

 so that I could use them at this meeting. He had not time to 

 give me the figures back of year before last, but he has done 

 the same thing for some six or seven years. In 1882, he 

 raised on an acre and a quarter of land 150 bushels of pota- 

 toes, which he sold for $112.50, and 5,000 bunches of celery, 

 which he sold for f 1,800, making $1,912.50. He paid out 

 for labor $50, and for fertilizers $70, making $120 ; leaving 

 for his own labor $1,792.50. In 1883, he raised 200 bushels 

 of potatoes, which he sold for 70 cents a bushel, making $140, 

 and 60,000 celery plants, which he put up in bunches, making 

 12,000 bunches, and sold at 18 cents a bunch, which he sold 

 for $2,160, making $2,300 as the result of the products from 



