128 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



see this afternoon. For more than an average life-time, in the state 

 of Iowa, I have been feeding and shipping stock to Chicago. Many 

 is the night that I have spent in the caboose with fellow shippers. 

 I have eaten with them, slept with them and drank— water it was, 

 (Laughter.) My whole sympathies are with the feeders and ship- 

 pers of this state. We can raise cattle and fatten them; we can 

 raise hogs and fatten them, and we can do it, as we believe, with a 

 profit; but when we get them to Chicago, there are other parties 

 who have a say, and what we had figured on as a profit, we are 

 liable to come home to figure up to loss. 



When I was invited to address this meeting, on the subject of the 

 Oats Failure in Iowa, the question came to my mind, whether I 

 would sit down and surround myself with books on agricultural 

 chemistry and prepare an address that would appear very learned, 

 and make you all believe I was a scientist, or whether I would drop 

 the books and simplj^ give you some of my own personal experience. 

 I chose the latter. 



I had intended to come before you and give you a talk on this sub- 

 ject, but your secretary sent me a communication asking for a copy 

 of the paper I was to read, and also my photograph. I was so 

 highly honored by thinking my photograph would appear in the 

 paper, perhaps, that I decided to write a paper, in order that my 

 photograph might accompany it. 



In the criticisms I shall make in regard to the work as it is 

 usually done in Iowa, I do not want one of you to consider for a 

 moment that it is personal. You all do your work well. It is the 

 man who does not attend these meetings I am referring to. But if 

 any of you chance to find in my remarks something that fits your- 

 selves, and that you would like to criticise me, I want you to bear in 

 mind that my fighting weight is 238 pounds, and that I never felt 

 better in my life than I do to-day. There is one advantage in a 

 written paper ; you always know when to stop, and I shall stop just 

 as soon as I get through. 



FAILURE WITH THE OATS CROP IN IOWA— THE REMEDY. 



BY JOHN COWKIE. 



With land rapidly advancing in value,' and the cost of operating a farm 

 increasing from year to year, it would seem that more attention would 

 be given to details in the growing of crops, and that scientific methods 

 should take the place of the haphazard system that unfortunately has 

 been altogether too common. No one familiar with the conditions as 

 they exist will deny that the oats crop in Iowa for many years has 



