pears as a hazardous prediction that within five years, and perhaps 

 even sooner, the home demand tnay fully equal the supply of our 

 agricultural products, and then, if they are wise, the farmers of 

 the country will be the masters of the situation, and those words 

 of Napoleon that "agriculture is the basis and strength of all 

 national prosperity/' will be recognized as sober truth. 



Awaiting then, as I think we may, in confident hope the good 

 time so near at hand, what, we may stop to inquire, are the duties 

 of the hour; and I would say first, study economy in production. 

 Suppose you ask any of the shop keepers of Geneva whether they 

 know what their nails, the sugar, the cloth which they sell you 

 cost them, would they not think you either jesting or recently 

 escaped from Willard Asylum ? But can our farmers tell these 

 same dealers what their milk, butter, eggs, hay, oats or corn has 

 cost them to produce ? Can our dairymen tell the actual or rela- 

 tive value of the several members of their herd, which are a 

 source of profit, which pay their way, which are being kept at 

 actual loss ? Does the farmer who is drawing his hay to market 

 reflect that every ton of hay contains of fertilizing constituents, as 

 Dr. Geessmann, of Massachusetts, says, from $5.93 to $9,60 worth 

 of fertilizing constituents, or as an average for the last quarter of 

 a century shows in New York $6.37 worth in every $10 worth of 

 hay sold? And yet our farms need this very fertilizing material 

 which this hay contains, and which, by feeding it, might be kept 

 upon the farm? and largely increase the fertility of our lands. 



And in this connection, I wish to congratulate the farmers of 

 New York, who find it necessary to purchase the so-called com- 

 mercial fertilizers, that the late legislature, most wisely, as I think, 

 have provided the means by which the purchaser of these products 

 may in future be protected, through the systematic analysis of 

 these fertilizers at your Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva. 



As evidence of the need and the extent of this protection I 

 would quote Commissioner of Agriculture Henderson, of Georgia, 

 who says that such analyses saved the state one and a half million 

 doTars in a single year; and Dr. Battle, Director of the N. C. 

 Experiment Sration, declares that the fertilizer control in that 

 state has during the past few years resulted in saving millions of 

 dollars to the farmers of that state- Tuere can be no room for 

 doubt that hereafter the farmers of NJW York will reap an equal 



