No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 231 



Let me give you a little incident that happened eighteen or twenty 

 years ago. I had a field that I considered a pretty good one, but I 

 got three hundred pounds of nitrate of soda and some acid phos- 

 phate and get some six or eight hundred pounds drilled into the 

 ground and harrowed, and was late in getting my produce to market. 

 I have learned since that acid phosphate is not to be applied except 

 in small quantities, just as you would take medicine a teaspoonful 

 at a time. Don't give your soil more than it can take care of at 

 one time. 



When you get me on this subject I am liable to talk too long. I 

 have the reputation in Jersey of having talked at least one man to 

 death. I don't want to do that here. But just one word on market- 

 ing. "We market in New York. A man who starts in the business 

 of market gardening, at first find whether he has a profitable market 

 for his produce. 



FAKMERS' INSTITUTE SESSION 



ADDRESS 



By A. L. MARTIN, Director. 



Now, my friends, you will notice that the remaining sessions of 

 this meeting are devoted to the interests of the Farmers' Institutes 

 of the State and the Advisers' Bureau. I will not take time now for 

 any continued remarks, but will simply say that our Institute work 

 this year has, to some extent at least, progressed. So far as attend- 

 ance, at least, is concerned, it has been the banner year. We have 

 spent about twenty-two thousand dollars on the work this year, and 

 have had Institutes in every one of the 67 counties of the State. The 

 attendance was over 208,000, and I think we are safe in saying 

 that the work has been appreciated. When we take into considera- 

 tion, further, that the interest manifested in these meetings has ex- 

 ceeded anything in previous years — and I am in position to know, 

 after having been in the work of directing these Institutes for six- 

 teen years — we can but realize what a hold agriculture has taken, 

 and the necessity of carrying to the farmers of Pennsylvania the most 

 approved methods of doing this great work as we find it today. We 

 take fresh courage when we see the appreciation and the welcome 

 extended to us in this great vrork by the farmers of Pennsylvania. 



I remember sixteen years ago it required courage, and some diplo- 

 macy and the greatest amount of tact to get permission to hold a 

 Farmers' Institute in some of the counties not very far from here. 

 Today there are over a thousand applications for Institutes that 

 cannot be filled. Why? Not because we have not the men and 

 women who would be willing to go out into the counties all over the 

 State, but because we have not the money to carry this work for- 



