TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 139 



ter than a course at any agricultural college on the growing of peaches. 

 It wakes a man up. It is much the same way with weeds. They say 

 that 25,000 square miles are rendered profitless by the Russian thistle. 

 The farmers sow wheat year after year, and the farms are so big that 

 they can not ba cultivated. It would be very poor Russian thistles that 

 would not take possession of the land under such circumstances. The 

 Russian thistle is certainly going to have the credit of introducing a 

 mixed population into that western country. In New York state, many 

 years ago, some people said that the Canadian thistle would soon estab- 

 lish its empire over the whole state. It has increased and scattered over 

 the country, but land is too valuable to grow thistles now. A man has 

 not time to bother with Canadian thistles; he grows plums. Solomon 

 once went by the field of the slothful man and by the vineyard of a man 

 void of understanding, and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and 

 nettles covered the place thereof, and the stone wall was broken down. 

 Those nettles might have been Russian thistles. 



What we need to understand is fundamental principles. I do not dis- 

 courage the agitation about all these fungous diseases — the more agita- 

 tion the better, because it educates the people; and I am pretty sure that 

 some of our farmers in New York state are going to be educated by the 

 Russian thistle and other things coming from the west. We are ready 

 for them; or, if we are not, we must give place to the man w^ho is ready 

 for them, and he is the one who will get the money out of the farm in the 

 future. Consequently, I do not look upon all these things with so much 

 regret. Let me enforce again, that we get the greatest good out of these 

 improved methods, when we do the best we can wHh what we have 

 already, and that nature abhors bare land, and tries immediately to 

 cover it up. We ought to cover our land in the fall as much as possible 

 and keep it covered till spring. Nature would do it for us if she had a 

 chance. 



If you would go over some of those old hill farms in New York and 

 New England, you would find them in process of abandonment. That 

 is another one of the good things — that the farms are being abandoned. 

 They ought to have been left for forestry purposes in the first place. 

 They have been cleared and given to grass; grass-farming always makes 

 grass-farmers. They sell a few loads of hay in a season; you will find 

 them in the little town markets, on the public street, with a load of hay; 

 they will stand there all day hawking for a customer, trying to get ten 

 or fifteen cents more on a load of hay, which they with great pains have 

 cleaned oflE from two or three acres. If you would go over those hill 

 farms, you would think their owners were florists. Their fields are filled 

 with ox-eye daisies and fleabane, and the people all the while say, "The 

 daisies have crowded out the grass." The land was sick and tired of 

 grass years ago, and the sod has become thin, and nature is trying to 

 improve that land, and she has tucked the daisies in here and there. 

 Pretty soon, perhaps, she will tuck in the Russian thistle. 



Some two or three vears ago there was an endeavor to pass a bill in 

 congress to appropriate a million dollars to set Coxey's army at work 

 pulling out the Russian thistles. I suppose if anything on earth would 

 have disbanded that army it would have been setting them at work pull- 

 ing out those weeds. Now, suppose Coxey's army had pulled out the 



