242 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



QUESTION: While the southern farmer had poorer land by buy- 

 ing fertilizers was he not poorer financially? 



PROF. MASSEY: Well, as I said, the southern farmer has been 

 dependent upon growing cotton upon the same land year after year 

 and I know of some land in North Carolina that has been in cotton 

 seventy-five years in succession. The land has certainly gotten 

 poorer not because of the fertilizer, but because the owner has been 

 enabled to draw still further on the natural resources of the land. 

 He puts a little on there, and the plant uses a little of that, and 

 draws on the soil still further. It was really the lack of fertilizer, 

 rather than the amount that he used; he has grown poorer financially 

 because he has w^asted his substance; he has wasted his bank ac- 

 count. 



QUESTION: Please give an ideal short rotation for the Pennsyl- 

 vania farmer engaged in general farming. 



PROF. MASSE Y: Now gentlemen, I do not like, as I said, to 

 lay down rules for any particular man or particular section. We 

 have certain rotations that have been found successful in various 

 sections of the country. W^e have Mr. Cherry's rotation of potatoes 

 and wheat and clover out in Ohio which has proved successful with 

 him, but those farmers that I spoke of who are grov»^ing wheat so 

 successfully on the eastern shore of Maryland have adopted a rota- 

 tion of corn and wheat and clover. One man there who came oift 

 of the Confederate Army as poor as the rest of us started in thet^ 

 with nothing, went into a little business and got a little money 

 ahead, and land was cheap in that section at that time. He en- 

 gaged a man to farm for him on shares, and laid down the rotation, 

 and the farm began to improve, and pretty soon he got money enough 

 ahead to buy another farm, and there was a man ready to go on it 

 on the same terms; that is, they would divide the cost of cultivating 

 that farm as nearly as possible, and it was understood that all the 

 roughage was to be used up on the farm, and the landlord take his 

 pay in the manure, and the tenant soon found that it vv^as a profitable 

 business. 



Year after year this man bought farms in that same neighboor- 

 hod until this man McKinney died about a year ago, owning forty- 

 two farms. His last wheat crop was 120,000 bushels, and men liv- 

 ing near his farm are buying land and renting it out in the same way, 

 and getting improved farms. That system of tenantry has been 

 wonderfully successful there. Lawyers and business men are en- 

 gaged in buying land, improving land and in rentiDg it in the way 

 I have mentioned. That system has been successful there. Their 

 main money crop is wheat. Their object is to get as large a crop 

 of wheat as possible, and then to manure their clover crop and put 

 it in corn. They used to think, under the old system, that corn-land, 

 was very poor for wheat; now they get the best wheat off of corn- 

 land. I was in Maryland two years ago and had pointed out to me 

 a twenty acre field from which a man had sold a thousand bushels 

 of wheat, but that w^as the old land that had been cultivated since 

 the early settlement of the country and only in recent years have 

 they realized what that land could do in the way of wheat grow- 

 ing. 



