96 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



or on the farms. Positive work is wanted, for this will 

 insure positive results. Plant in the mind of the young man 

 the thought that upon the farms of Massachusetts he can win 

 success, while all the time being lifted into a higher and 

 truer manhood, and he will go out and demonstrate the 

 truth of your teachings. Plant but a single doubt, and you 

 have destroyed all hope. 



A condition for success not appreciated as it should be, 

 is that of checking the outgo of so much money from the 

 farms, for farm products. To what extent we, as a people, 

 are paying out for what might be produced at less expense 

 at home, no one can imagine. Here is the work of the 

 future, to multiply the farm products adapted to the farms 

 of Massachusetts. If you are protecting, saving and utiliz- 

 ing all the wastes about the place, liquids and solids, you 

 are not only adding to the fertility of your farm, but you 

 are in best condition to use understandingly, and with 

 greatest profit, commercial fertilizers. If any portion of 

 the natural means of fertilization is lost, your farm is in 

 danger of slipping from under you. The commercial article 

 has its mission, and it is to supplement, but not to take the 

 place of. At our desks we make complete formulas for 

 growing all crops, but the land cries for the natural food, 

 the farms fail for want of barnyard manure. 



In Maine, from $600,000 to $700,000 were paid out 

 in 1889 for commercial fertilizers ; in New Hampshire, 

 $650,000 ; and in Massachusetts, nearly, if not quite, 

 $1,000,000. If all had been saved about the buildings, 

 and properly utilized, would this investment have been 

 necessary ? Should not a measure of this drain be checked 

 by better methods ? 



What per cent of the corn consumed in Massachusetts 

 is grown here? In Maine one firm in 1888 sold almost 

 9,000,000 bushels. In this State the amount purchased 

 by the members of the Boston Chamber of Commerce 

 aggregated 12,000,000 bushels, and a large per cent of this 

 was distributed over the State, and fed by the formers. If 

 corn can be grown in New England for forty cents, is it 

 good business practice to pay sixty or more, unless one is 

 bending all his energies, and producing to the utmost a still 



