No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 229 



falls to my lot to talk on the ^'Acre and tlie Market," tliis morning 

 and give my field experience in handling the soil and disposing of 

 its products. 



It is not my intention to talk to the man who grows the rose 

 and carnation under glass, neither to the man who has a row of 

 bean poles across his acre with a flourishing growth of strawberries 

 on the one side and cabbages on the other; nor do I intend to speak 

 to the orchardist, with his acres set in choice trees to grow fine 

 fruits for the market; but to the Pennsylvania farmer, who has 

 a barn on his farm. Much as I appreciate the whole range of 

 agriculture, in all its branches of fruits and flowers, harvests and 

 forests, I feel that it is the general farmer, the grower of our 

 staple crops, that needs to have the acre and the market treated 

 from the standpoint of fertility and the dollar in relation to the 

 pocket of the farmer, who suffers most from a depleted acre as 

 the cause of the trite saying that "farming does'nt pay." 



We hear so much in these days of specialized farming and the 

 financial returns from an acre when so treated, that it scarcely 

 seems possible that the broad acres of our farms should fail to 

 yield their increase, when men, teams and machinery are at hand to 

 simplify the operations and advance the cause of agriculture. 



The man who grows the foods, which supply a nation needs no 

 apology for his occupation. He is engaged in a noble calling and 

 for this reason ho and his occupation are worthy of our attention 

 as agricultural institute lecturers and teachers of farming. What 

 greater work is there then for agriculturists than to supply the 

 needs of the human body? Consider for a moment the failure of 

 any one of our staple crops; what it means? Eighty millions of 

 people to be deprived of bread; and yet our aim in all our work 

 should not be only to grow crops but men. No one on the farm 

 knows better than myself that the soul must bend to serve the 

 body, and the sooner the mind of man realizes the situation, will it 

 control the problems of life more reverently and intelligently. 



I want to talk this morning to the general farmer who raises the 

 substantial foods of man; to the husbandman who has a barn on 

 his farm, in which the live stock turn the raw material of the acre 

 into the finished product, of meat, milk, eggs and fleece, as well as 

 produce the most valuable by-product for the farm in the world, 

 and that by-product is stable manure, for the acre. The whole 

 secret of successful agriculture lays largely in the fact that the 

 farmer becomes a manufacturer, situated as he is, with a barn on 

 his farm, using it as our fathers did of old, for the storage of crops, 

 but instead of selling all the corn, wheat, oats and hay direct from 

 the storage barn to the market, the time has come for the good of 

 his acre that he must quit selling all the raw products of the acre 

 and convert his storage barn into a factory to make manure for the 

 acre and money for his pocket. It seems to me that there is 

 something in general farming that is deserving of a great deal 

 more attention than it usually receives, and that something is, the 

 acre. The man who has a barn on his farm and is engaged in grow- 

 ing the staple crop is very differently situated from the market 

 gardener, the orchardist, the grower of small fruits, the wheat 

 farmer of our western prairies, the ornamental gardener, the rdse 



