FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 87 



went into Chicago couldn't have been sent without the root. Here is a 

 nutriment within your reach. The farmer of Iowa can make first rate 

 butter from tlie turnip, but I could make the finest flavored butter from 

 the sugar beet and you can do it from the sugar beet pulp, and your sugar 

 beet business ought to be conducted so that the farmer who has a dairy 

 of cows should grow patches of beets for the very purpose of getting the 

 by-product to feed to- his domestic animals. He cannot do as good work 

 in fattening any animal on the farm without that pulp as he can with 

 it, and if you would thoroughly appreciate the value of that by-product, 

 feed it to every animal on the farm. It will save you from buying the 

 by-products from the mills. You don't have to buy bran, oil meal or any 

 of those meals. You are independent and when the times comes that you 

 are independent, you cau snap your fingers at the cane sugar men in any 

 of the islands of the sea. 



DEPENDENCE OF AGRICULTURE ON TRANSPORTATION. 



E. A. PROUTY, INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION. 



The farmer is at the basis of all industries in the United States. There 

 is more capital employed, there are more laborers employed, the value 

 of the product is greater than that of any other industry. Next to the 

 farmer comes the industry which 1 represent, the railroad. In point of 

 •capital, in point of laborers employed, in point of the value of services 

 rendered, the railroad stands next to the farmer. I am to discuss for a 

 minute tonight some of the relations between the farmer and the rail- 

 Toad. As your presiding officer has told you, I am a member of the 

 Interstate Commerce Commission, whose duty it is to hear complaints. 

 Just at present we have a complaint which is called on our files the 

 "Hay Case." The question raised is as to an advance in the hay rate. 

 Y^'ou raise I believe some hay in the State of Michigan. The better grades 

 of that hay are shipped to eastern markets. New York, Philadelphia, and 

 Boston. Now this change in the rate makes a difference of about |1 a ton 

 in the expense of getting hay from most portions of Michigan to those 

 markets. The price of hay in New York and Boston is fixed by New 

 England and by some portions of Canada and by New York, so it comes to 

 this. If under this new rate which has been in effect since 1900, you send 

 your hay to market in the east, you get one dollar less for it. I suppose 

 wou raise from one to two tons an acre, in other words this advance has 

 made a difference of from one to two dollars an acre in the net producing 

 power of every acre of land in the State of Michigan which is devoted to 

 the raising of timothy hay. In 1893 the gTain rate from the Mississippi 

 river to New York was 29 cents a hundred pounds. Six years later that 

 ■rate had fallen to ISVo cents a hundred pounds, a decrease of about 

 seven cents a bushel. The average yield of corn in the state of Iowa is 

 about 30 bushels to the acre. Assuming for a minute that the farmer had 

 the entire benefit of this decline in rates, it would make a difference of 

 $2.10 in the net producing power of every acre of land in the state of 

 Iowa TN^hich .QouW ,ke devoted to the raising of corn on a six per cent basis, 



