EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 



137 



Experimental stations were established for what pur- 

 pose? Yoii have been reading about spraying for 20 years. 

 You have been reading about humus. It has been proven 

 that hunnis is necessary and must be in the soil if vou would 

 grow anything worth while. The experimental station calls 

 your cheerful attention to the fact that on a few acres prop- 

 erly cared for more can be raised than on your big farm 

 under the methods employed by you. You are expected to 

 try this thing yourself. Nothing succeeds like success. 



The Pennsylvania railroad is going to establish experi- 

 mental stations on their lines. Why? Because the farmers 

 have been going west or to South Dakota, where a man last 

 year couldn't keep chickens because it was 40 degrees below 

 ^ero and he had no snow to stuff the cracks with ; to Mani- 

 toba, where they go to raise wheat, with what result? No 

 •crop last year. What is the use of going west or northwest 

 when we have thousands and thousands of idle acres right 

 .around us ? The railroads are spending money for bulletins 

 ior you to read, for everyone to read. The Long Island rail- 

 road has never made both ends meet and has been on the 

 point of bankruptcy dozens of times and yet the stockholders 

 go on putting their money in because the future is assured. 

 It has been a little slow in coming, but it will come. Suc- 

 cess has not come as quickly as they thought it would, but 

 they haven't lost hope. 



Sometimes our soil isn't right to raise the things we are 

 trying to make grow. If it is acid, it needs to be made alka- 

 line. If your soil is sour, it won't grow crimson clover. It 

 will grow raspberries and lima beans that seem to do just as 

 well on such soil. Put wood ashes on the soil, say 400 pounds 

 to the acre. We bought city manure. It cost us 95 cents a 

 ton. I find in Connecticut and Massachusetts they pay as 

 high as $5.00 a ton for this humus, because you can't get 

 along without it. Without that manure you might put on 

 20 tons of commercial fertilizers and you couldn't grow a 

 wisp of hay or anything else. Commercial fertilizers with- 

 (Out humus will do nothing. Down in the Hackensack Valley 



