PIG AS A MANURE-MAKER. 199 



lizers ; we must get our manure in some other way. If you 

 will keep the pig at work, you will have all the manure you 

 want. I believe that good, healthy pork, is an excellent arti- 

 cle of food for every man, woman and child who works with 

 his or her own hands. I believe that the meat of pigs that 

 are well raised, and fattened on the products of the soil, is as 

 healthy as mutton or beef, or anything else that comes on to 

 our tables. The man who works out of doors, who takes care 

 of his own business, who oversees his own men, and takes 

 care of his own stock, can stand a little pork yet ; and when 

 I say that the pig is, beyond all comparison, the most splendid 

 animal for us to make fertilizers from, I am telling you what 

 I know to be true. If you will go to work yourself with a 

 shovel, and put in the hog, and let him mix up his urine and 

 offal, feed him well, never allow him to waste an hour of his 

 precious life, keep him fattening, keep him going along every 

 day and hour of his existence, he will put money in your 

 pocket, and increase your manure-heap better than you can 

 do it in any other way. 



I have a little black sow, — I suppose of the Essex breed, — 

 but not full blood. I raise all my litters from pigs that suck 

 all the teats they can get hold of, — first, middle and last. 

 This little sow I am telling you about happened to be a " teat- 

 man's " pig. When she was three months old she weighed 

 but seven pounds. I thought, as soon as she got big enough 

 to roast, I would kill her. But the first I knew, she got 

 with pig, and I thought I would let her sweat. Her first litter 

 was eight, and she raised them all. Her second litter, about 

 five months later, was nine, and she raised them all. I sold 

 them for five dollars apiece. The man wanted them to make 

 manure, and he could afford to give more than they were 

 worth for pork. Then she went along until the fifth of last 

 May, when she had a litter of fifteen, and raised twelve of 

 them ; and on the sixth of November, she had seventeen 

 more, and raised twelve. She is only a little over two years 

 old, and she has raised forty-one pigs. That sow has yielded 

 me more profit than any cow or any field of tobacco that I 

 have heard of for the last two years around us. I like the 

 whole thing. I let my hired man have one of those pigs, and 

 told him ho might have the slops, and he must keep that pig 



