16 



ry on a farm profitably, keeping up the fertility of the- 

 soil by the use of any commercial manure which has yet 

 been placed within reach of Massachusetts farmers. It 

 is, however, often expedient to use them to start a crop' 

 and to help out a short supply of other fertilizers. But 

 he who places his reliance on them will find his profits. 

 vary in an inverse ratio to the cash paid out. 



One of the most important and difficult problems we 

 have to meet, is to devise a method of restoring the ex- 

 hausted fertility of our pastures. We are constantly 

 abstracting those elements of the soil contained in the 

 products of the dairy and returning nothing. As a con- 

 sequence Ave see our pasture lands fail year by year,, 

 slowl}'', it is true, but as surely as the return of the 

 seasons. Most of our pastures are thorough to be cul- 

 tivated, and an application of the ordinary fertilizers is 

 temporary and too expensive. Much has been writtem 

 recently on this subject, but no cheap and effective- 

 method of renovating worn out pastures has yet been, 

 pointed out. 



Another difficulty of increasing magnitude, and per- 

 haps the most perjjlexing of all, is the poor quality of 

 much farm labor. We can many of us remember when 

 young men from the country — neat, smart and intel- 

 ligent — came among the farmers for work about the first 

 of April in every year. Farmers' sons themselves, they 

 knew how to perform every kind of farm work, and,, 

 best of all, they seemed to make their employer's inter- 

 est their own. Now such help is rare, and we are oblig- 

 ed to depend largely on foreign labor, unfamiliar witk 

 our methods and often careless of our interests. 



The farmer needs skilled labor almost as much as the 

 jnanufacturer-T-unless his own eye can constant]}' over- 



