344 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



again as long as the water would pour off roily. When he got through with 

 that he put the sand back again into the cup and he had only three cups full j 

 the fourth one had dissolved in the water and had been turned out. He 

 turned to me and says: "That land will not leach; here's an abundance of 

 soluble matter right on the surface^ and if this land would leach that soluble 

 matter would have been carried down out of sight long ago." What a simple 

 experiment. Still it was absolutely demonstrative. 



Ever since that night I have had faith in the plains, but I have had to hope 

 against the experience of a great many failures. A great many men have gona 

 on them to make homes and have gone through with their little means and 

 deserted tbem. 



I never felt more sorry for a man in my life than I did for one poor fellow 

 I met. I say I met him. I came to where he had just built his- 

 homestead buildings upon the plains, and he was at work in his front yard 

 with a spade digging up a little patch of ground where he proposed to plant 

 a few potatoes. I said to him : "Have you a team?" "No." "Have you 

 a cow?" "No." " What have you been doing heretofore?" He says, " I've 

 been sailing." " Were you ever upon a farm before?" "No." That poor 

 man, without any experience, without any education — as I might say — to fit 

 him for the plains, had gone there without any money, without a team — but 

 he had a wife and baby, and he occasionally worked out iu some lumber 

 camp in the neighborhood and got a little flour; and he was try- 

 ing to make a home for himself. I sympathized with him, bat really I 

 expected he would fail. A man can't help failing when ho goes into a busi- 

 ness that he don't know anything about. In order to succeed upon the plains 

 a man wants a good industrial education ; he not only wants to 

 be industrious, but he wants to know how to apply his industry so as to get 

 practical results. 



The fire is the greatest enemy of the plains. Year after year it has swept 

 over them until everything that is vegetable on the surface has been burned 

 away. You cannot get any good results until you put that vegetable matter 

 back again. But how best to do it is the question. You must study for 

 yourselves how best to do it it in your particular circumstances. If you are 

 situated so that you can get barn-yard manure, put it on ; if you are so situ- 

 ated that you can get muck, put it on ; if you are situated so that you can't 

 get either, you have got to do it with green manuring. You can't buy 

 manure to put on there. You may have your pockets full of money and you 

 would fail before you got through. By green manuring, sowing crops there 

 which will grow and not taking them off, you will get along all right. 



Some men meet me with this: They say, " We can't leave a crop on the 

 land; we have got to live; we have got to have what comes off the land for 

 the first crop." Suppose that is so. It don't take long to clear an acre of 

 plains, and if a man has a team so that he can plow up bis acre or his two- 

 acres that he wants for his crops, let him do it ; then let him plow ten acres 

 more and put that into something which he proposes to turn under and let him 

 turn that ten acres under, and let him turn it under for three years in suc- 

 cession, if you please, while he is living off the two acres or whac he needs to 

 live on ; then he will get something that will pay for his labor. 



You must put that vegetable matter back into the soil; it won't be put 

 back for you, and until you put it back either by green manuring — which in 

 my judgment is the best solution of the whole problem except where you can 

 get this muck handy — you can't take off vegetable matter. 



