FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 45 



of the words of the illusti-ions Webster, to look about us and see ''where 

 we are at."' It costs something to raise wheat; it costs something even 

 to go through the motions without raising any, as some of you have 

 had reason to know tlie past season. Possibly if we knew what it 

 costs, or if we stopped to consider what it costs, some of us would 

 decide that in our individual cases we can not afford to raise wheat 

 at all — a most rational and wise conclusion, in my judgment. 



When, in 1893, the government at Washington sought to find the 

 estimated cost of raising an acre of wheat in the different wheat-rais- 

 ing states of the Union, it appears from the reports of the farmers of 

 I^lichigan that the average cost of raising and marketing an acre of 

 wheat in this State was |18.S3. Of this amount f2.80 is charged to 

 fertilizers. The average yield in Michigan the same year was 13.2 

 bushels, and the average price in Chicago 57 cents. Under these cir- 

 cumstances the value of an acre of wheat, considering the grain merely, 

 is |7.52 only, requiring that the farmer should be able to realize |6.31 

 per acre out of his straw in order to come out even. Today the price 

 is somewhat higher and the same acre of wheat would be worth .|9.24, 

 but even then there is too much difference between cost and value, 

 in favor of the former, to permit the business to be profitable, unless 

 we apply the logic of the lady who, though keeping boarders at a loss 

 to herself of a dollar apiece per week, thought she should get on all 

 right if she only had enough of them. 



It is not possible, I think, to materially cheapen the cost of produc- 

 tion. The only avenue to reform, then, lies in increasing the yield. 

 Here surely is' an ample field for effort. At this point I want to lay 

 down the paradox that plowing and sowing are the least important 

 elements in wheat raising; fertility of soil is the great desideratum. 

 If there is abundance of water in the well, any kind of a bucket or 

 pump will bring it up^ but if the well be dry, all the" pumps of the uni- 

 verse, though they have glass cylinders, globe valves and ball-bearing 

 handles, can't raise a drop. You say, perhaps, that all this is mere 

 commonplace; we knew this long ago; there is nothing new about 

 it. ,Then why do you not put it into practice in your business, you 

 farmers who are raising an average of only 13 or 14 bushels of wheat 

 per acre? I see every year men plowing and fitting land for wheat, 

 on which the ordinary weeds of commerce fail to grow; land barren 

 of everything except the evidences of the last crop failure. I suppose 

 that such must be depending upon the Biblical promise of a seed 

 time and harvest, but I want to say that in this case the harvest will 

 be very largely a pantomime. 



The past year Michigan, in common with many other of the winter 

 wheat states, suffered from a serious failure of the wheat crop, due 

 chiefly to two causes — ''winter killing'' and "Hessian fly." The xevy 

 severe cold, with little snow, caused deep freezing of the ground, a 

 condition that was aggravated by heavy rainfalls before the frost was 

 out, thus filling every depression with water that remained on the 

 wheat for a considerable time. At the opening of spring the wheat, 

 already weakened by previous unfavorable conditions, its roots more 

 or less h.eaved out by the frost and its top largely dead, was subjected 

 to further injury from a period of dry weather, when it was most in 

 need of an abundance of rain. Yet its cup of bitterness was not yet 

 full, for the Hessian fly opened its campaign at about the usual time, 



