314 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



Maintaining Soil Fertility — Now there is another point I wish to 

 touch on, and that is fertihty and then I am ready to close. A short time 

 ag-o I went down to attend a meeting at Champaign, where we have our 

 university, and got to talking with some corn growers in the state, and 

 one of them — he is one of the largest corn growers in the central part 

 of the state too — said to me: "You grew more corn to the acre last 

 year in the northern part of the state than we did in the central part of the 

 state." I was surprised, we were not supposed to be in the corn-pro- 

 ducing part of Illinois at all and our part of the state has not the same 

 fertility as down near Champaign, and some of those counties. I found 

 in the past few years that there was not much profit in feeding steers, 

 and they have been selling the corn from their farms and we in the 

 north part of the state averaged ten bushels of corn more per acre than 

 those in the central part of Illinois. Tliere is no profit in growing 30 

 bushels. Forty bushels makes ten bushels for profit, sixty bushels makes 

 30 bushels for profit ; there is three thnes as much profit in sixty bushels 

 as in forty. We have g-ot to do better work along this line. 



A man near DeKalb had a rented farm that he had been working 

 for fifteen years. Nine years a'go he had a lot of cows on that farm, 

 feeding them all he grew and some besides. He was then getting sixty 

 bushels of corn to the acre. Since the high prices for corn, he has been 

 selling his corn. I said to him: "i\Ir. Jones, how much per acre does 

 your corn yield?" "Forty bushels." "Why have you tumbled down." 

 "I have been selling my corn — have been checking out of my bank of fer- 

 tility and putting nothing back into it." We cannot afiford to do that. 



A banker one day called me into his bank about two months ago; 

 he said he wanted to talk with me about fertility. I found out pretty 

 soon that he had several farms that he was renting and the renters had 

 been corning off these farms until thev were runied — thev could no 

 longer make money on them, and he was having trouble in finding people 

 to rent them at a fair rent. I said to him. "You cannot allow your farm 

 to be treated in that way ; there is no more sense in that than there is in 

 a man continually checking out of your bank without making any de- 

 posits." That is as true with farming as it is with banking. 



Dr. Bernays — Aside from its great cleanliness and the great pains 

 taken to keep out dirt, what gives your milk its great keeping powers? 



Mr. Curler — Cooling — Merely rapid cooling. The milk that I sent 

 to Paris, we took no pains in its preparation. Until we took the bottles 

 out with the sealing paper, we did not know what cows or milkers it 

 came from. But when we were ready to take that milk and continue 

 the cooling in ice. we put it in with salt added, putting it down to as 



