No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 457 



take to the miller, to our own men who grind the wheat and furnish 

 flour to our people, the wheat that will give the largest amount of 

 nourishment to the man and woman and child who eats it. And we 

 can see from just this little illustration that I have used the varieity 

 of our agriculture and the variety of demand which is being made 

 upon the agriculture now for the highest products, for the largest 

 amount of science that can be injected into it. Because this is 

 largely a question of chemistry after all. When the flour is made, 

 the chemist tells you wha"" is in it, what the fundamental elements 

 of it are and how those elements are to be used by the digestive organs 

 of the human body to nourish the blood and send it to the heart 

 and to the extremities on its way of helping man and making him 

 the best animal that God has made. And after all that is just 

 what we have to help to do and he is the man we have got to feed 

 and we must feed him in a way that his body will be the very best 

 for the services of his Commonwealth and his Country and of the best 

 illustrative value to his neighbors for right living; and, of course, 

 the farmers have a good deal to do with that. And so we are not 

 only in co-operation with God in making man as perfect as he can 

 be, but are in co-operation with the Commonwealth and country in 

 making man as productive as he can be, and this, of course, is the ulti- 

 matum. 



GROWING POTATOES 



By T. E. MARTIN, Syracuse, N. Y. 



Mr. Chairman and Members of the Pennsylvania State Board of 

 Agriculture: There is a difference between having something to say 

 and having to say something. I believe, however, that I am in the last 

 situation this forenoon. I am a farmer and I am going to talk to you 

 from a farmer's standpoint. 



I have just a few statistics here on potatoes. There are six states 

 that produce one-half the potatoes of the United States. According 

 to the statistics, there were 328,787,000 bushels of potatoes produced 

 in the United States in the past year, of which New York produced 

 44,676,000 bushels, an average of 102 bushels an acre; Michigan, 

 34.424,000 bushels, an average of 104 bushels to the acre; Pennsyl- 

 vania, 27,896,000, an average of 88 bushels per acre; Maine has an 

 average — I won't read the rest — of 210 bushels to the acre; Wiscon- 

 sin has an average of 95 bushels to the acre; and Ohio has an average 

 of 82 bushels to the acre. So these are the six states that produced 

 one-half of all the potatoes in the United States, ranking in total 

 production in the order named. 



Our farm is located in Monroe county. New York, at a little place 

 called West Eush. 13 miles south of Rochester. We bought this 

 place in 1892. Tt was a fair farm. We knew that it must be drained. 

 We did not have the means to drain it at that time. There was a 

 13,000.00 mortgage on the place with 5 per cent, interest. In 1894 



