No. 7. DEPAIiTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 233 



tons of liay per acre as well as thirty tons of ensilage and 49 

 bushels of rye per acre. Not only this increased yield per acre, but 

 got two, three and even four crops of clover hay in a season. Now, 

 fellow farmers, I hold this is the clew to the question whether 

 farming is profitable, and the answer is that it depends on the acre. 

 If I could so change the production of the fifteen acre farm at Flour- 

 town that instead of only keeping two cows and one horse when I 

 went on that farm and farmed it the first j^ear at that rate and 

 soon nothing but hounding poverty staring me in the face. I quit 

 the miserable business of one animal to every five acres, turned 

 ray barn into a manure and butter factory and made five acres 

 support ten head of live stock in roughage and bedding, summing 

 up thirty head of cattle and two horses where twenty 3'ears before 

 I had only the two cows and one horse and bought hay. Is it 

 any wonder that I want to talk to the farmer with a barn on his 

 farm. He has in his barn, not in his field, the whole secret of the 

 question of the acre and the market. If the steel knives of the 

 cutter cut the crops and the teeth of the live stock crush it and 

 the storaac>;S of the animals soak it, it is in the best possible con- 

 dition for a fertilizer when taken direct from the stable to the 

 field to enrich the acre that is in the world. Stable manure has 

 proved, when the best feed is fed and both the solid and liquid 

 manure all saved and spread directly on the acre that there is 

 no plant food in the world like it, much less equal to it. Not only 

 that it is quick to act, but it lasts longer than any know^n plant 

 food iu the soil and is the only complete manure in itself because 

 it has that inestimable quality in it, known as humus. 



Now, fellow farniers, look at it again. The fertilizer agent comes 

 around and talks up fertilizers, they are all right in a way, but I 

 want to go on record and say right here that they are not the 

 plant foods for the general farmer to rely upon; if he does, his 

 soil will come to grief. Fertilizers have their use for the vegetable 

 gardeners, and legumes have their sphere in the round of catch 

 crops as green manure, but for the farmer with a barn on his farm 

 to depend on them is a mistake; it pays him far better to run 

 his legume through a cow and get a profit out of it both in milk 

 and manure, while if the legume is turned under he will get a lop- 

 sided manure of nitrogen and humus only, without phosphoric acid 

 and pot&sh, while if the cow were to masticate it she is the best 

 fertilizer mixer iu the world for the acre, and when she is done 

 with it it has all the ingredients of plant food. Gentlemen, this is 

 not talk, it is the acre risiag out of poverty into prosperity and 

 co\eijnu: our fields with living green. I see the temptation for a 

 farmer to go to his acre with a bag of manure, but it is as big a 

 fraud on (he American farmer as the orator who said the potato 

 crop was a curse to Ireland. Fertilizers are too dear for the farm 

 crops, they will do for truckers, vegetable gardeners, yet the farmer 

 prefers to buy a bag full of dirt for |1.50 rather than buy a bag 

 of feed for his animal — had he bought the feed for the cow he 

 would hav(? had both fertilizer and milk. 



Suppose a farmer does get twenty or twenty-five bushels of wheat 

 or rye by the use of fertilizer, what a measly crop that is compared 

 to fortv bushels of rye to the acre and then the rye acre ready for 

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