The Bulletin. 65 



On January 1, 1906, Ohio sheep averaged 6.25 per cent of wool. 



On January 1, 1906, North Carolina had 1,291,781 hogs, valued at $6,S46,455. 



On January 1, 1906, Ohio had 2,436,797 hogs, valued at $20,103,575. 



Throughout a very large portion of the eotton-produeing area are to be 

 found thousands upon thousands of acres of land that should never have been 

 cleared. The rolling character of this area, under our system of cotton cul- 

 ture, has brought over thousands of acres to a cursed condition of yawniug 

 gullies and abandonment. The piedmont section of our Southern States was 

 wonderfully endowed by nature, but our system and practice in the pursuit of 

 agriculture have vandalized the forests and prostituted a once fertile soil. We 

 now see and feel our sins, and it is our privilege and duty to repair the wrong 

 we have done. I confidently affirm that we can do this in no way other than 

 by the growing of live stock. Less labor will be required. We have the soil, 

 the climate and water. We have feed stuffs (or can produce them) in such 

 abundance and variety that we are puzzled to know, which to select. If other 

 sections of our country, producing 500 per cent more animal products than 

 these sections consume, can find markets, we surely can find them, since mil- 

 lions of our cotton dollars are sent in exchange for mummied, embalmed and 

 renovated products of the hog and the steer. 



We can have pasturage and soiling crops for nine months in the twelve. Our 

 short and mild winters do not necessitate expensive barns and stables. I can 

 see but one obstacle in the way of our becoming a great lrve-stoek producing 

 section. That obstacle is brains, or the lack of them. Education, intellect, 

 training and a determination to arise from our lethargic inaction, see and seize 

 the opportunity within our grasp. 



When some forty years ago the scarred Confederate soldiers returned to the 

 deserts of their once exuberant homes, they had contracted the fighting habit, 

 and ever since they and their descendants have been fighting — fighting grass. 

 I have spent several months of the time since July, 1904, holding Farmers' 

 Institutes in the section of the South where the reign of King Cotton is all 

 but absolute. In and around thousands of acres that I passed through or by 

 were growing grasses, legumes and weeds that, on many a farm at least, could 

 have been converted into animal products that would have netted more money 

 than the profits from the cotton grown on these farms. 



The character of our soils under the influence of our heavy rainfall permits 

 more plant food to be washed or leached from our bare cotton fields than is 

 removed in the average crops through five years. A covering of vegetation not 

 only prevents to a very great extent this loss, but also prevents the formation 

 of gullies and the removal of our soil to the Atlantic Ocean. The character of 

 the plants best adapted to live-stock farming is such as to reduce this loss to a 

 minimum. Many of the crops found to be best for hay, pasturage, soiling and 

 ensilage are legumes, and all legumes are soil improvers. The soil that yields 

 an abundant crop of legumes is thrice blessed — it yields a rich food for live 

 stock, a profit for the owner of the land, and the laud itself is enriched. 



Into whatever country it goes, cotton-seed meal, at $30 per ton or at $35 per 

 ton, is considered one of the cheapest and best of dairy foods or for fattening 

 purposes. If cotton-seed meal is shipped a thousand miles and there known as 

 the cheapest and best source of protein, if the animal products resulting from 

 its use are shipped to us and sold at a profit, are we not sending our goose to 

 lay the golden egg in a nest not our own? 



There was a time when cotton gins were so located as to permit the seed to 

 fall into some stream of water that they might be carried out of the way. The 

 use of cotton seed or cotton-seed meal directly as a fertilizer is also a practice 

 most wasteful and unwise, since its feeding value of thirty or thirty-five dol- 

 lars per ton is lost. The same principle may be applied to the plowing under 

 of cowpea vines or other green manurial crops. A' ton of cowpea hay is worth 

 on the market anywhere from $12 to $25, the price depending upon the locality 

 and the ignorance or wisdom of the purchaser or seller, or both. Its feeding 

 value is equal to that of wheat bran. The relative commercial fertilizing value 

 of a ton of cowpea hay is between $10 and $15 ; if used as a fertilizer without 

 having been fed. from $12 to $25 of its total value is lost. 



