COST OF RAISING INDIAN CORN. 219 



sion may be conveyed. I do not wish gentlemen to get the 

 impression from me that leached ashes are worthless, because it 

 is not so. They are worth something, and they do a very good 

 work on grass land. They are worth at least ten cents a 

 bushel, for that purpose. It is the money value that we want 

 to ascertain. That is really the whole question. 



Mr. Brown, of Concord. I have been greatly interested in 

 the lecture to which we have listened, and very highly in- 

 structed, as far as I could comprehend it. I have tried to keep 

 within reach of it, as far as I could ; but I question whether 

 many of us were able to follow the lecturer through and under- 

 stand all the terms which he used — and he used very few tech- 

 nical terms compared with those which are used in his business 

 generally. 



Some points in the lecture are exceedingly encouraging. 

 The first point was in regard to the culture of Indian corn. I 

 will venture to say that the good old State of Massachusetts 

 pays between two and three millions of dollars annually for 

 Indian corn ; and where does that money go to ? The towns 

 throughout the State of Massachusetts are furnished with corn 

 from the West, in the form of corn and corn meal. So it is in 

 other New England States. I have known of two or three 

 thousand bushels carried in one year into a town in New Hamp- 

 shire, with a population of only thirteen hundred souls ; and 

 yet the cry is among the people all over the State nearly, that 

 it is unprofitable to cultivate Indian corn. Now Dr. Nichols 

 has put it down at a cost of forty-five cents a bushel, and I have 

 no doubt that he is precise in his statement, from my own obser- 

 vation of his operations. But in my own town, on the farm 

 adjoining mine, I have seen a crop of eight hundred bushels 

 grown, and the man who raised it stated to me that the whole 

 cost was not one mill over twenty-five cents a bushel. For 

 twenty-five years past, I don't believe there has been a year 

 when I could not raise corn cheaper than I could buy it from 

 the West or South. And yet the feeling is general all over 

 New England that we ought not to cultivate Indian corn. I 

 think the doctor could reduce the cost some five or ten cents a 

 bushel, but I am not certain. I should like to know whether 

 he credited the corn crop with the cost of the preparation of the 

 land for the grass crop, because that is a very important matter. 



