404 ANNUAL REPORT OP THE Off. DoC. 



over (he State by means of a car that runs specially for the purpose, 

 a car that goes l<> each one of the agricultural sections for the 

 purpose of instructing the farmers of the Slate by adopting this 

 plan of breeding for improving corn ;uid for the increase of corn 

 production. 



Now this question of breeding, of course, has taken me off of 

 the subject, but there is more in Hutchison's idea, perhaps, than we 

 at first think. If the Government can import bulls and transfer 

 them from one part of our country to another part of the country, if 

 they can import cattle, it is just as practicable to do it in the mat- 

 ter of horse breeding, and if the United States Government would get 

 into relations with the French Government and Belgian Government, 

 so as to get from the Government breeding stations the best kind 

 of horses from those governments, I cannot see why if the Govern- 

 ment were to establish a stand in any one of our counties and put a 

 competent man in charge of a stallion, why we might not reap the 

 results of it just as we are reaping the results of breeding plants 

 under the auspices of the Agricultural Department at Washington. 



The Government is doing more for the South in that direction 

 than for the North, because the South has had no variety in their 

 agriculture, and they are establishing farms all over the South in 

 order to teach the people that they can diversify their agriculture, 

 that they can feed their own stock and own animals as well as raise 

 cotton and "hog and hominy" and at the same time improve their 

 lands. 



There is one man at Washington who is giving his whole time 

 to running these farms in the different parts of the South in order 

 to demonstrate that if- that can be done in one direction, there is 

 no reason why it cannot be done in another. 



In speaking of turning this over to the Commissioners and hav- 

 ing a special place provided for keeping them well, it seems to me 

 there is no reason why we could not improve our horses ourselves 

 as well as improve our cattle. I tell you, gentlemen, that we have 

 not yet started on the development of our agriculture in Pennsylva- 

 nia; we have scarcely made a beginning and it is just now that we 

 are waking up to the tremendous consequences, to the tremendous 

 influences, to the tremendous results that follow from a study of 

 agriculture, and the practice of the best agriculture that there is 

 in the country. 



My friend who has read about the time that we shall leave the 

 farm, wants to go a step farther. He wants to make it not only 

 the most independent occupation in the world, but the most ab- 

 sorbing occupation in the world. There is not any occupation that 

 has so much science at the bottom of it and so much in the way of 

 practical results at the top of it as the avocation of scientific agri- 

 culture, the ordinary everyday growing of our crops and our ani- 

 mals. It is just such talk as this and just such talk as Hutchison 

 has put out, that will enable us to reach practical results, that will 

 make Pennsylvania what she is and ought to be, the leading State in 

 agriculture in all its varieties of production. 



Why, the dairy products of the United States are third in value, 

 possibly second to corn, and even the industry of hens is fifth in the 

 value of the products in the United States. If you look at the popu- 

 lation of Pennsylvania and the distribution of the population, you 



