1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 135 



student of political economy that there could not have 

 been much economy of that American boy's legs, when he 

 traveled in many cases thirty miles for each acre of corn, 

 of which the fathers are so proud. 



How many farmers of this State have made an intelligent 

 effort in the last five years to improve the seeds of their 

 leading crops? Are we not prone to employ some one else 

 to do this high-class labor for us, and to be content to pay 

 them one thousand per cent more than ordinary prices, for 

 the little sack of seed which may or may not be better than 

 the "scrub" variety we already possess? You will per- 

 ceive that I am striking out many lands; if the stakes have 

 not been set straight, we shall have to go back and line 

 them up later. 



It appears to me that, as a people, we have made but 

 little effort to discover the laws which govern our profession. 

 Our conditions until recently have been peculiar, and 

 abnormally favorable, so that we have naturally gone on 

 practicing imitative agriculture. Too many of us have 

 milked the cows as long as they chose to give milk, instead 

 of commanding them to give milk as long as we chose. The 

 manure of the animals, which is worth half the cost of the 

 food fed to them, we still continue to baptize under the 

 eaves, because our ancestors did. We wait each succeeding 

 spring for opportunity to thrust in the plough, when we 

 should have made opportunity by thrusting in drain tile. 



If we get on well in the future, we will be compelled to 

 go according to law; which is, in agriculture, "Science 

 practically applied within the sphere of the law which 

 governs it." The locomotive engineer runs his engine and 

 train according to the law of railways ; if he proceeds 

 according to the law of steamboats, and attempts to cross a 

 river without a bridge, he wjll come to grief. How many 

 farmers are practicing better methods, or are planting better 

 varieties of corn, than did Capt. John Smith? Some are, 

 but many are doing hardly as well as he did. He imitated 

 the Indians, we feebly imitate Smith. Our occupation is to 

 produce growth and advanced development, and this is but 

 change in forms of matter according to the laws of life. 

 The change from dead earthy matter to living plant forms 



