156 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



want to take all these things into consideration. My friend 

 Bowker and my friend Lawrence make pure superphos- 

 phates ; the}^ put in the requisite amount of acid. A farmer 

 wants to buy something to make potatoes grow, and he goes 

 to the manufacturer and buys a genuine phosphate, — nothing 

 but sulphate of lime and phosphate of lime, — and it does not 

 do him any good. He says at once, "The man who sold 

 me that is a rascal." He was, perhaps, the most honest of 

 men. The trouble was, the man applied a genuine phos- 

 phate to grow a crop to which it was not adapted. The 

 farmer was more to blame than the manufacturer. 



We want to take all these things into consideration. And 

 remember this : there is no sort of confidence between these 

 two elements. We want a hundred thousand tons of honest 

 fertilizers used in America where there is one ton used to- 

 day, and we can afford to do it if we can get an honest thing, 

 and establish confidence between the manufacturer and the 

 farmer. We want the farmer and the manuficturer to feel 

 that their interests are identical ; we want the article to use, 

 and we want them to make us an honest article,* and then we 

 want to go forward and say that this question is of such vital 

 importance, that it is the bounden duty of the government of 

 the State or of the nation to oversee and superintend this 

 business ; that the government has a vital interest in it, and 

 that, as they protect the health of our people by laws against 

 the sale of unhealthy provisions, they should protect the 

 pockets of our J people, and secure crops for the country, by 

 interfering in this matter in a proper manner. 



Now, farmers and manufacturers, come together. Your 

 interests are mutual. You manufiicturers want to make an 

 honest profit by making an honest article. We farmers want 

 that article ; but, in order to secure and keep this confidence, 

 we want to put you under legal restrictions, so that we shall 

 be sure of getting what we pay for. If we do not use it 

 right it is our fault. We will try to protect ourselves up to 

 that point. 



This brings me up to the law. And here I think I shall 

 agree with my friend Strong. We must have a law to give 

 farmers confidence. We must have a law of such a kind, 

 and so administered, that it shall control, not my friend 



