256 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIEIY. 



ins; 100 acres fallow, would hire by the year nine regular men servants,, 

 whose wages would equal SlOO per year each and board ; also, two 

 women servants at $30 each, besides extra hiring during seed time and 

 harvest, and would require fourteen plow horses and one saddle horse 

 and servant for my gentleman renter, who pays $3,000 per year rent and 

 all taxes, blacksmithing and other repairs, making at least $500 more. 



He was proving how ruinous protection was to them because it 

 made them pay two prices for salt, leather, soap, candles, malt, while 

 by actually prohibiting the entry of the cheap corn, wheat and wool of 

 the United States and other nations it so over stimulated the prices of 

 British farm products that in two or three years over-production had 

 ruined all the British farmers who had no outside demand. [See his 

 speech in Parliament April 9, ISlfi.] At that time the British farmer 

 had no better market than we have. Yet he could afford all this out- 

 lay, live like a gentleman and lay up money. The fact is the limit to 

 the capacity of an acre has never been found. The farmer who fears to 

 fertilize and hire is like the merchant who fears to advertise. In truth 

 we are not farmers, "we are nettle trampers and scratchers," as I heard 

 a Nebraska pioneer say thirty years ago. It is true our laws cut us off 

 from the world's markets, but we of the crowding and expanding west 

 can greatly remedy that by going more into variety and exchanging 

 with each other. To illustrate, a young man who came from England 

 to Holt county seventeen years ago with nothing but his bare hands 

 soon got a small Dit of land. A big farming neighbor was hauling some 

 barley to the railway and grumbling at the price. "How much do you 

 get V asked young John Bull. "Thirty cents and be d— d." "Haul it 

 across the road to me for thirty and be blessed." said Bull. "You don't 

 mean it?" ''I do." "Cash down '^" "Yes ; cash down." 



The whole neighborhood was amazed. Some said the Englishman 

 was going to make beer. People came to see about it, "What are 

 you going to do with that ?" "Feed it. Its the best horse feed in the 

 world," said the Englishman. "What! With corn all around us at 

 fifteen cents?" 



That Englishman is now regarded as the most responsible man in 

 the neighborhood. Several of the men who thought him a fool have 

 long been bankrupt corn raisers. 



To' think that in a county that has a reputation for fine cattle, and 

 where large numbers of cattle are fed and swine are exported in great 

 numbers and attention is given to horse flesh, that there if anyone 

 happens to grow a surplus of peas or beans or turnips, carrots, beets, 

 etc., he must send them to St. Louis or Chicago ; that there the professing- 

 stock fancier would look on the producer of said pulse or tubers with 



