86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



study and investigation in seed, the heavier the pressure 

 reahzed by individuals the greater will be the compensation. 

 Here is the work for men, not possible to be performed by 

 others, where every man must be a law unto himself. 



The lavish appropriations by the national government and 

 various boards and commissions for the uplift of farmers have 

 been educating a generation of leaners. If this war disturbs 

 this and forces the necessity, as well as the opportunity, for 

 individual thinking, the outcome will be a wave of agricultural 

 prosperity this nation has never known. Trained the worker 

 must be, educated the thinker must become, but when once 

 the fundamentals are fixed, theory must surrender to practice 

 and experience become the teacher, which alone can save. In 

 the wise economy of nature it has been ordained that he who 

 does the best he knows obtains results commensurate with 

 labor of hand and brain. There is no single path save that 

 of principles. Practice must ever diverge though results con- 

 verge. With this thought let us discuss flint corn. 



If good results have attended your efforts along a path 

 widely divergent from that here indicated, follow that path, 

 for results alone must determine your line of action. The one 

 essential to urge to-day is more corn on every farm. It is 

 one of the stern realities growing out of the war. If the yield 

 has been satisfactory to the grower in the past, we must 

 realize to-day that it has not reached the limit of the farm, 

 and strike for more corn per acre. The limit is the man, not 

 the land. 



Experience forces the conviction that deeper plowing, more 

 careful plowing, the laying of the furrows at an even angle in 

 breaking the sod, are all necessary for that uniform prepa- 

 ration of the land without which maximum crops are impossible. 

 Some popular labor-saving machines gloss the surface of the 

 field, but do not tear up the depths of the furrows. Force 

 necessary to push feeding rootlets through hard soil can never 

 be utilized for perfecting crops. Thorough preparation of the 

 seed bed is a long stride towards record-breaking yield. It 

 is not the cost of preparation, but the value of the possible 

 crop which must determine action; hence we must consider 

 well the initial steps. 



