626 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Now, these men are here, the same as they are in Indiana, and other 

 States, and these are the men we want to help. We want to find 

 out what will most benefit them. Now, how are we going to find this 

 out? . 



Now then, a few years ago the men at the Experiment Station got 

 together and decided that they would try to get the corn that av- 

 eraged the largest jield, and then teach the farmers of the State 

 that this was the corn for them to plant. So the Experiment Sta- 

 tion men — I was one of them — sent to the north and to the south, 

 and to the east and to the west of the State, and procured samples 

 of the different varieties of corn grown there, and we planted them 

 in nice little plots, and awaited results. The southern part pro- 

 duced 60 bushels per acre, the north 30, the east 40, another 50, and 

 so on. Then we published these results and sent them over the 

 state, and told them "now you know." Well, they tried it; and the 

 corn grew; in fact, I think it would be growing yet if the frost had 

 not stopped it. But it did not ripen and develop, and they had to 

 harvest it when the time came, but it was a miserable lot of corn. 

 You may have read that one year the corn crop of Indiana was a 

 failure, and the corn not up to the standard. That was the year. 

 Well, they harvested that corn, and then the troubles began in ear- 

 nest. The elevator men refused to take that corn; no one would 

 have the stock. Finally they compromised on a lower price, and 

 the corn was shipped away, and one after another of these farmers 

 came to us and said, ''We have lost |1,800 or |8,000," as the case 

 might be, "on the corn we shipped out last year, and the only reason 

 for it was that the corn was not fit to be shipped," and they blamed 

 the Experiment Station — as they had a right to do. One old fellow 

 said that the reason was that those fellows up at Purdue had taken 

 the corn away from home, and tried to get results on different soils, 

 consequently the results they offered were not accurate and had no 

 value, and he was right. 



So the last two years we have had a man at work in each section, 

 growing corn. I want to speak of this, because it is of value to the 

 people of Pennsylvania. The best way to obtain results, and deter- 

 mine what is needful for that particular soil is by experiment sta- 

 tion right in your own county. For instance, for the farmers of 

 Lancaster county, a station right there doing the work on that 

 particular soil, and awaiting results. Well, this is the way we did it 

 in Indiana. 



We have in every county a poor farm, which has never produced 

 anything for anybody, and nobody expected it to do so; in fact, 

 people usually forgot all about it until they came to pay their taxes, 

 and then they grumbled a little at it. So we went to the authorities 

 and got permission to use these poor farms for our work, and then 

 we went to the farmers and asked them to co-operate with us, and 

 in Randolph and Clinton counties, where we carried on this work, 

 we had about a hundred of them interested. In Randolph county, on 

 the 10th day of May, over 20 farmers gathered together, and each 

 one had a sample of the corn he was going to plant that year. Then 

 they each took a plot and planted it under the instructions of our 

 Experimental Station, and they got results that surprised them. They 

 ran from 47 up to 90 bushels per acre, and I sat down and figured 



