438 ANNUA!. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



out as much as three hundred dollars during the year for labor. T 

 have a neighbor, who was present at this meeting, and he represents 

 six hundred exjiort cattle that he finishes every year; and I asked 

 him: "Do you grain any?" He replied: "No; if 1 cannot fatten 

 my cattle on blue grass 1 will go out of the business." 



But 1 am boosting West Virginia. Our pastures are sources of 

 great income. Sometimes when 1 talk to farmers in other states they 

 say, why land is Too high to graze. Yon cannot afford to pasture one 

 hundred dollar-acre laud. Let us see if we cannot. In i^'rance today 

 there is a lot of land that rents for |90 an acre for grazing. 

 Now, they must keep some good stock on it. The reason w^hy we 

 cannot afford to pay high prices for grazing land is that we do not 

 put the right kind of stock on it. If we graze on this pasture land 

 the kind of stock that is grazed in France, viz., high priced breeding 

 stock, such as they ship to us and sell at fabulous prices, then we 

 can afford to pay $100 per acre for good grazing land. 



Our pastures in West Virginia, as well as in Pennsylvania, have 

 been "running out." They don't produce as good as they did twenty- 

 five to fifty years ago. In the meeting referred to I asked the ques- 

 tion: ''How many cattle can you carry now and how many did you 

 carry twenty years ago? " Some reported that they only kept about 

 one-third as many. There is something wrong. We understand at 

 once why land runs out when farmed year after year. We know that 

 the organic matter and the available plant food is exhausted, the land 

 deficient in lime, and we have come to understand that the same thing 

 happens with the grazing lands. Our grazing lands are deficient 

 lands in organic matter and in lime, they having no available plant 

 food, and we must take the same care of our pasture land as of the 

 farming lands if we want to make them keep up their productivity. 



Now it shall be my purpose to discuss the ways and means of 

 doing this. We want to look upon our farms and our pasture fields 

 as animated objects. The fact is they have or should have great deal 

 of life. If you take your horse and work him without feeding for 

 three, four or five days a week he becomes lean and weak, and if you 

 don't begin to feed him he will die. We have been working our pas- 

 ture lands for years and years and only giving them half rations 

 and it is not any wonder they have become unproductive. Our fields 

 must be fed ; they must be clothed and taken care of just like the 

 human body. If we fail to do that they will not give the returns 

 they should. The Jewish law required that the land should have all 

 that it produced every seventh year. I don't know whether those 

 old Jews understood scientific agriculture or not, but they wore 

 practicing it. Every seventh year all that the land produced went 

 back to the soil. For what purpose? To feed, clothe and make 

 available the plant food for the next six years. Friends, I think Ave 

 can improve on the Jewish method if we give the soil something 

 every year. Let some organic matter get into the soil to make plant 

 food available and that land will be productive for years to come. 



There is no excuse at all for w^orking out land. If you do not 

 leave your farms better for your children than when you found them 

 you have missed your calling in life. Our lands ought to become 

 better; they must of necessity be more productive if the people are 

 to be fed, because everything that we have comes from the soil, and 

 in the future greater demands will be made upon it, for we are 

 told in fifty years from now we are to have two hundred million 



