76 IOWA DEPAETMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



eration of Americans was sold into the hands of a band of Russian Chris- 

 tians, who came to this country seeking freedom and opportunity. You 

 will ask me how this thin and barren land can compete with the West 

 in growing wheat. It is simply because these farmers have learned how 

 to economize on the price of their plant food. Wheat is usually sown 

 in that country in October and cut in the middle of June. As soon as 

 the wheat is off they go in with their disc harrows and tear up the 

 stubble thoroughly, then they sow a bushel or five pecks of southern cow- 

 peas to the acre, cover them thoroughly and add for each acre about 100 

 pounds of muriate of potash and 300 pounds of acid phosphate. In a 

 favorable season the cowpeas make a heavy growth and early in Sep- 

 tember they are plowed under or else hogs are turned in to eat them 

 down. As soon as they are plowed the wheat is again seeded and so on, 

 year after year, with one crop of cow peas growing between each two 

 crops of wheat, and it is a fact that with this treatment the yields of 

 wheat keep on increasing, while the soil seems to become even more 

 productive with each year. The cowpeas furnish the nitrogen and the 

 chemicals provide the potash and the phosphoric acid. This is the way 

 in which the eastern people are studying out new methods of farming, 

 and it may be said that they are succeeding well in doing so. 



From this follow other questions. I speak of what these men are 

 doing on that cheap, abandoned land. They are not truck growers, but 

 raising much the same crops that western farmers do. They are suc- 

 ceeding and doing well, on land which costs them only $30 or so, in com- 

 petition with your $100 land. How then could I go to a young man in 

 the East and tell him to go to Iowa and raise corn and fatten stock, a way 

 off at arm's length from the market. His first question would be, what 

 must I pay for the land? I imagine if -you go out into this State and 

 find land well located you will probably have to pay $100 per acre, while 

 this man could go to some of the waste land in the East and buy it for 

 $30 or a little more. He will also ask what will the outfit cost. On your 

 black, heavy soil you must have big horses and strong tools, and you 

 cannot work the land all through the year, whereas, on the lighter land 

 of the East, my man can do the greater .part of his work with a disc har- 

 row and a light team of horses or mules; not only so, but he can work 

 through a large part of the winter, preparing the soil. As a matter of 

 fact, you men will realize the fact that in one respect you are too rich 

 and that your land is too strong. If you only had a streak of our dry 

 sand and gravel running through your country once in every twenty miles 

 or so you would be better off, for that would give you good road ma- 

 terial. I would hardly be justified in telling a man with limited capital 

 to come to Iowa and buy the expensive land and the outfit which would 

 be necessary, when he would go to the Delaware peninsula, for example, 

 buy land at one-third the cost of yours, have more working days through 

 the year and produce practically as large a yield of grain as you can. 

 Not only so, but you will raise 100 bushels of corn and sell them at 

 30 cents, while he ckn at least raise eighty bushels and sell for 65 cents 

 or more. You will see from this that the time has come when by reason 

 of the cheap lands and high prices the East has really become a com- 



