272 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



I will not attempt to say what rotation you shall have nor how 

 you shall use the crops other than that they should, aside from 

 selling wheat, be fed on the farm, and the solid and liquid manure 

 returned to the land. In a general way, nitrogen-gathering crops, 

 such as clover, peas, soja bean, or some other nitrogen gatherer, 

 should enter into it, not only to enrich the farm, but to balance the 

 feed ration ; that clover must precede wheat to supply the nitrogen 

 so hard for wheat to get, and so costly for you to buy as to be pro- 

 hibitive; that probably floats, for a soil poor in phosphorous, may 

 be added in lieu of the soluble phosphoric acid where the soils are 

 rich in organic matter or naturally acid. Pursue constructive farm- 

 ing rather than destructive farming. Build character in lieu of 

 dwarfing it bj- the ever-narrowing process of declining farming. 

 Do not permit yourselves to think in small yields or results. The 

 truth is, you have unconsciously come to lean on a soil naturally 

 rich, but not capable, as no soil is capable of maintaining long, great 

 returns without great art in its use. 



No soil ever has or ever can maintain virile man unaided. 

 You are keeping it just up to or slightly ahead of your bare neces- 

 sities, while you should keep the level of returns ahead of the re- 

 quirements of a refined living, as exemplified in home life, social 

 life and public life. 



But to return to the story and lesson of the speaker's farm. 

 I was told, there and here, that labor could not be afforded. Then, 

 if you cannot afford the lowest priced man labor of the markets, 

 the muscle worker, how can you afford to use your own labor? 

 Only as labor is used is wealth accumulated, and no man ever be- 

 came rich or ever will become rich in industrial pursuits by his 

 own unaided muscle. It was said there, and is said here, that capi- 

 tal cannot be afforded in farming, except in the minor key. Then 

 are we achieving living as laborers, and are rightly classed as such 

 by many publicists. But, my friends, capital is the foundation 

 essential of a successful business, and should be used to its maxi- 

 mum. 



With us machinery was classed out on our narrow farming; 

 yet machinery is the right arm of industrial achievement, and it 

 lifts us out of the purely muscle-working class; and we, in the 

 east, who admit that it can not be used successfully, doom our 

 agriculture to ignominious failure in competition with your 

 mechanism. So I fitted my fields for the free play of machinery, 

 removing hosts of rocks. Chemical fertilizers were generally held 

 with us to be stimulants, in the end empoverishing the soil, and to 



