86 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



operation. There were forty little colored people from seven to fourteen 

 years old, getting their education in that schoolhouse, and ])icking the tea 

 twice a. week for Dr. Shepard. They did not earn much money, but the 

 average colored man works for 45 cents and if a couple of little picka- 

 ninnies could earn that much it would be a help. Last summer in the 

 attempt to make green tea an interesting fact was ascertained down at 

 Somerville, South Carolina and at Tokio, Japan, simultaneously. They 

 found that there is a ferment within the tea and as soon as you pluck 

 the leaf, that ferment has the power to turn it into black tea. They got 

 a steel cylinder from Great Britain and we had it about a week when 

 they improved it so materially you wouldn't know it, raised the tempera- 

 ture to 400 degrees F., and they made green tea in forty minutes, prevent- 

 ing it from associating itself with oxygen and blackening the leaf. The 

 discovery was made at the same time in Tokio, Japan. I would like to 

 drink my tea made without chemicals,, picked by clean and neat young 

 people. Out in the Orient they get into the tea boxes with their feet, and 

 I understand they perspire in those warm countries. 



We are studying how people should be fed. The young gentlemen in 

 the feeding classes here can tell you, if you go with them into the farmer's 

 barnyard how to compound the timothy hay, corn, roots, oats, etc., to feed 

 to the domestic animals so as to economize the feeding. Everybody knows 

 very well there is no use in trying to feed a work horse on straw. He 

 wants more nitrogen, perhaps more i>rotein than is found in that straw. 

 What plants have it? The mill feeds all have it. Can we feed the horse 

 on mill feeds, on oil cake today, possibly something else tomorrow? Very 

 nice calculations must be made. The experience of old farmers teach 

 them, and it has been the experience of their fathers and grandfathers, 

 but maybe the old folks miss it once in a while. 



A good deal of progress has been made along these lines, but did you 

 ever have any lessons to any extent given with regard to the feeding of 

 babies and working men and old men and old ladies. Very little is done 

 along that line in any country in the world. Congress gives us money 

 to inquire into that. Look at the tables set before you and eat everything 

 you can see, and I don't know just what the result would be. We know 

 that poor people who are not able to buy enough nutritive food are not 

 able to do the work of the people who are able to set the table in good 

 shape. We know that the people who have more beds than they can 

 sleep in, more chairs than they can sit in, and so on, are not the healthiest 

 people. The two extremes do not give satisfactory results. Nature gives 

 us some very interesting lessons with regard to feeding. Nature has pro- 

 vided milk, a perfect ration. Nature will take care of the calf turned 

 out in the green grass, a perfect ration. You can make no improvement 

 on nature. So we are studying along these lines. 



In regard to the use of the by-products of your sugar mills. I took an 

 interest in the beet sugar propaganda, because I knew the American 

 farmer needed that kind of an addition to his crops. We will not dis- 

 cuss politics here or say anything about what the money making power 

 may do or may not do. When I went to the Iowa Agricultural College 

 experiment station to try to build it up and get some young men to go 

 there and study the sciences relating to agriculture, I found it neces- 

 sary to build up the herds. I found it necessary to send to Chicago fat 

 cattle to make the farmers listen to me. The finest car loads that ever 



