Farmers^ Institutes. 45 



from the anvil and the cobbler's bench we never hear of their returning to them 

 again. But among agriculturists how many return to smell the mother earth. 

 He instanced Cincinnatus, Scipio, Virgil in the Georgics. George Washington, 

 who was a farmer as well as father of his country, Daniel Webster, who after a six 

 months visit to the British Islands, spoke only of what he saw of farming there. 

 The agriculture of Massachusetts brought in $41,000,000 in 1875, only exceeded 

 by the leather or cotton interest that year. It was the support of 44,000 fami- 

 lies. Massachusetts farms are worth on an average $4,000, and there is no one 

 who has so much comfort and revenue from such a small capital as a farmer. 



No one should buy a farm on credit. Better work for wages than a money 

 lender. Nor should a farmer work to k 'save up money." He should put the 

 profits of his farm into it again, by both tillage and fertilizing. The farmer 

 who neglects these things, that he may get four per cent, on his money, is get- 

 ting cents when he might be getting dollars. 



If he puts $100 in the savings bank he may get $4 a year from it, about equal 

 to four pounds of butter if sold to the rich, or a small pig, or a calf a few days 

 old without a pedigree. With the $100 he might buy improved machinery, or 

 make needed improvements, or buy improved live stock that would bring him 

 in many times the interest. 



Keep the money out of the savings bank and go into par tnership with Divine 

 Providence in the only bank that the farmer ought to think of, the bank of the soil. 



Another farmer's vice was that of trying to own too much land. It is in our 

 blood, for we are the descendants of land robbers. It reminded the speaker of 

 the New Hampshire farmer who wanted to own all the land that "j'ined" him. 

 There is no one man in the state who has talent enough to thoroughly and 

 properly farm more than 40 acres. So long as one ton of hay is the average 

 product per acre in this state, farmers had better give more attention to that acre. 



Referring to the relative profits of Eastern and Western farming, Secretary 

 Russell said that farmers and their sons in the East were enticed away by the 

 vast agricultural domains of the West, but that they were leaving a soil more 

 profitable under intelligent cultivation, and better homes than they found in the 

 West. Corn can be grown as well in Massachusetts as in any state. Com 

 from Illinois isn't worth as much as the cob meal from corn grown in this state. 

 This is a fact, and chemical analysis proves it. A farmer in Royalston was sell- 

 ing wheat straw, for $22 per ton to a pail manufactory, and raised 29 bushels of 

 wheat per acre, while in the same season a Dakota acre produced but 19 bushels 

 and the straw was worth nothing. The farming of the West was nothing but a 

 "skin" farming, and it is already becoming a rotation of diversified crops upon 

 farms decreasing in size. 



Secretary Russell expressed a willingness to answer any questions, and was 

 asked if he thought Massachusetts farmers should raise corn instead of putting 

 their fertilizers on grass land. He replied that he believed in diversified farm- 

 ing, and that the quantity of each crop depends upon the kinds and fitness of 

 the land for it. Don't haul manure far from the barn yard. Put it near by 

 and use commercial fertilizers on the distant land, particularly if the land is 

 hilly. It costs too much to carry a load of manure very far, when only ten per 

 cent, of it consists of fertilizing elements. 



He had previously said that an acre of corn can be raised for $8 for labor, and 



