240 ANNUAL REPORT OP THE Off. Doc. 



tries of Europe and America are not crowded with such cows after 

 several centuries of breeding — but the acres on the big and little 

 farm were equally productive; there was no difference there be- 

 tween upland and lowland. Talk about buying your neighbor's 

 field; simply deepen your own by the system of ripening a field for 

 a crop before you add more acres, it is cheaper to secure and 

 cheaper to maintain depth and richness of soil on one farm than 

 to bu}' the second farm and dissipate the energies of men, teams, 

 machinery, seed, time and money over a wide expanse of acres. I 

 tell you again, gentlemen of the Keystone State, it is the acre, 

 with from six to eight tons of hay that solves the question of the 

 market for the farmer who will do it. 



You have all heard the instructive scientific lectures on the soil 

 by those professors whom I have already referred to in this meet- 

 ing, one sounding a note of warning in regard to the small yield 

 of wheat per acre in the United States, the average being only a 

 little over twelve bushels per acre last year, while another with 

 his tables showed the value of manure as it came from the stables 

 to be the greatest, but after it was out of the stable that the care- 

 lessness of the farmer allowed it to degenerate into comparative 

 useless stuff. If every farmer here will go home and turn his 

 barn into a factory this fall and coming spring, converting his 

 harvests into finished products, such as butter, milk, eggs, poultry, 

 swine and sheep, while the by-product in the form of manure is 

 returned to the farm, the acre will solve the oft-asked question, 

 does farming pay. 



There is a new commodity that is produced on the farm to the 

 great surprise of farmers and their families, and it sells higher, 

 brings a bigger price in the best markets than any crop the farmer 

 grows out of the ground per square inch; and that is cleanlines.^. 

 It is one of the important articles sold in our cities today and 

 so strong is the demand that people are willing to pay a big price for 

 it. I had that experience myself when I began to make butter and 

 send it to Philadelphia; it was sold along with ^'the others," but 

 it was not long till there was a call for tlie butter with "the three 

 small stars," and the market man came back one day and said I 

 have a customer for all your butter. Now and then some one near 

 by the little farm would run short of butter and send over to see 

 whether we would be so kind as to "let mamma have a pound 

 of butter." It was not long afterwards the mother called, then 

 a carriage drove up and asked whether there was a chance to 

 get a pound or two of butter, then came an engagement of twelve 

 pounds a week regufar, summer and winter, at better prices from 

 one family alone, and so it went on till city trade was cut down and 

 the market man complained that he did not have enough. About 

 that time a Jersey heifer came in fresh with her first calf and 

 helped up tbe quota and things ran along prosperously. 



The market man came home one day and said the only butter I 

 sold was yours, T wouldn't have sold that had it not been en- 

 gaged. I asked the reason, he says there is a fellow that comes 

 there and says he only has one cow and will sell over three or 

 four hundred pounds of butter and right nice butter, but he sells 

 it two, three or four cents cheaper and the people just buy from 



