66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURK. [Pub. Doc. 



essential for the rations in tlie early daj'S of our steer are 

 more costly. Possibly another extra $1 per acre will thus 

 be absorbed. It is railroad polic}' to make long hauls cheap, 

 and wholesale transactions to far-away buyers are on a lower 

 scale of prices. Bran often sells by the car here within one 

 or two dollars of local prices in the States from which it 

 comes, wliile cotton-seed meal is but a little more in Boston 

 than in Chicago. Gluten is shipped from Chicago to New 

 England points for $3.90 per ton. At feeding points in the 

 west it costs nearly as much. Aside from home-grown corn 

 not over one ton of protein foods need be purchased. This 

 seems like a partial second expenditure of the $10 advantage 

 of location, amounting, for tillage and grain, to $3.75 for 

 the 21/2 acres, leaving a net of but $0.25, of $2.50 per acre, 

 to bring, with the manure produced, our land alongside 

 western land in yield. This would pay for 130 pounds of 

 acid phosphate, 30 pounds of potash and 50 pounds of 

 nitrate of soda per acre annually. It is adequate to place 

 our land on a parity with western land, and, in the end, 

 before it in point of production. 



Abundant experiment station investigations in the west 

 show that the addition of manure to soils there producing 

 no more than ours as ours arc no^v treated, gives but a 

 meagre gain in crops. ]\Ianuring does not increase crops as 

 it does here, a/id in my experience is not as enduring. The 

 intensive farming proposed, returning the excreta of well- 

 fed steers and including an annual application of 190 pounds 

 of chemical manures, adds wealth to our soils, increases our 

 crops and incomes. There are unpresented factors that dis- 

 turb the calculation, such as cost of marketing our stock on 

 the one side and the superior value of sale crops grown in 

 any proper rotation here on the other. The balance will fall 

 on the right side when all the other factors are considered. 



I have handled cattle in a very rich section of the INIissis- 

 sippi valley and also in the ranch region, and am success- 

 fully building up a New England farm, and do not indulge 

 in forced or merely speculative reasoning. It is possible to 

 grow as much beef per acre in New England, at as good 

 profit to him who produces the food he consumes, as is 



