44 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



nance of 1787 we find these words: "Religion, morality and knowledge 

 being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 

 schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." 



It is therefore a jdy to me to take my place for a time in the Board 

 of Control of the Agricultural College, and to speak on this platform 

 in favor of the grand work the institution is doing. 



WEDNESDAY FORENOON. 

 LESSONS OF THE YEAR IN WHEAT GROWING. 



A. M. BKOWN, SCHOOLCRAFT, KALAJIAZOO COUNTY. 



Mr. President and Fellow Farmers — When Superintendent Smith 

 asked me to formulate some new ideas on the subject of wheat growing, 

 I was reminded of the story of the boy who was asked by his teacher 

 to write an account of the voyage and discoveries of Columbus, and 

 to make it wholly original. The lad's composition, when completed, 

 ran something like this: "Christopher Columbus was a Jew peddler, 

 and he set out to find a new world in order to have a better market 

 for his old clothes. He made a boat out of birch bark and used a sec- 

 ond-hand linen duster for a sail. In three months' time he reached 

 America with his cargo of old clothes, and thought for sure he had 

 struck a bonanza, because he observed that the people were naked 

 His disappointment was unutterable when he discovered that they 

 ]>referred a string of glass beads to a ])air of ])ants or an overcoat." 

 1 very much fear that originality and novelty of this striking sort will 

 not jiass current in this body. The subject, however, I think you will 

 all agree, does not offer a ver^^ broad held for fresh discussion. I can't 

 remember when I have heard a really new and practical idea put forth 

 in regard to growing wheat, and yet this is one of the great agricul- 

 iiual interests of this country, aggregating a value of from two and 

 v»ne-half to four hundred millions of dollars, and it is one of the prin- 

 cipal crops raised by the farmer of Michigan, the one to which he looks 

 chlelly for ready cash when he seeks to lift the mortgage or build a 

 new barn. 



Tn the earlier days of the State's history, virgin soil meant a bountiful 

 wheal: crop, and a bountiful wheat crop meant a full pocketbook. But, 

 my friends, new elements have entered into the problem since that 

 time, and we now have on the one hand the sharp competition of the 

 great Northwest, with its boundless areas of fertile soil, where wheat 

 can be produced at a minimum of cost; and on the other hand a depleted 

 soil, rendered so by an irrational system of skin farming, based on the 

 notion that the chief factors in wheat growing are plowing and sowing. 

 Under these circumstances it may be well, in the slang paraphrase 



