No. 7. DEiPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 601 



75 bushels of wheat to the acre and some men get a hundred." They 

 said, "We can't do that but we can grow corn, and get an average 

 of SO bushels to the acre." And they take this to market long ways 

 in teams, but they have faith in their future, and courage to work 

 hard for less money than we people get here. Now, do you see 

 why they succeed there? 



Several years ago it was my privilege to go across the water. I 

 guess I Avas always a pessimist. I remember when I was a boy — I 

 Avas born in Ohio — and I can remember when a farmer got 11 cents 

 for his hogs, which he had fed on his farm, and sold his steers at 

 |90 to |120 a head, and once when I was a little boy, I was sent 

 with some of them to a neighboring farmer, and when I got them 

 there, the old man gave me a dollar. I tell you I was proud. When 

 wheat got down to |1.25 the farmer's said, "Times are getting poor 

 now." They kept on growing poorer and poorer, and the farmer 

 began to average only forty bushels to the acre and then twenty-four. 

 Then I bought a field next to ours that I had been wanting for a 

 long time; it had got down to where I could handle it. I have that 

 field now. But the average yield grew smaller, prices grew and the 

 paint wearing off the houses, and the mortgage on the farm grew 

 greater rather than smaller, and I remember riding along in the 

 train and seeing the old houses growing shabbier, and the old farmers 

 getting white-headed, and I said to myself "Agriculture is doomed 

 here; the richer west is getting richer, and the poor farmers here 

 are getting poorer, and there is nothing left for them at all." Soon, 

 however, times began to pick up in Ohio, and they began 

 to pick up here, and today times are much better than 

 they were then. But still it seemed to me that the soil 

 Avas impoverished, and then I began to think of it, and it struck me 

 that this was new soil; it could not be worn out; it had been in 

 use less than five hundred years — much less in most places — while 

 in Europe the farmers have been farming the same soil for centuries, 

 and are still farming it, and just about then I had the opportunity 

 to go over to the old world, and I started in England, and then went 

 down to the Isle of Jersey, and then over into France, and the one 

 thing I Avanted to see was how they could have lived on the land 

 so long, and could still continue to live on it, and it was the most 

 marvellous thing I ever saw. In France I saw the finest farms I 

 have CA'er seen; the next were in Scotland, and I don't know whether 

 Scotland was not better, eA-en on the whole than France. But in 

 France, where I stopped, there Avas an old Frenchman, who offered 

 to take me some miles out of Paris to see a fine farm which he 

 knew, having come from that neighborhood. So one beautiful morn- 

 ing we started out by train. Now, the old Frenchman could not talk 

 any English, and I kncAV about three words of French, but we talked 

 all the way. When we saw anything that did not please us, we 

 frowned, and shook our heads, and when something particularly 

 attractive came under our notice we smiled, and shrugged our 

 shoulders, and we understood each other. When we got there, we 

 Avent directly out into the fields, and I can assure you I have never 

 seen a finer sight than that field presented that morning. There 

 was the wheat as high as the backs of his oxen; one man went 

 alongside three yoke of oxen, one man driving, and an American 

 binder doing the work. A little bevond this was another field, 

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