1878. 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



43 



that men should take on their shoulders of 

 her burdens when ever they can, and I think 

 it is an indication of a shiftless farmer who 

 lets his women get the tircwood. 



During the winter all wood needed through 

 the summer should be drawn home, sawed, 

 split and housed. Few things are more an- 

 noying tlian the necessity of cutting wood 

 when you are busy in the fields. 

 Farmers' Homes. 



I think we farmers do no not cultivate 

 enough taste for the beautiful. In oiu- inor- 

 dinate greed for the "dollar of the daddies" 

 we too often lose sight of the beauties of na- 

 ture and transform ourselves to groveling 

 worms instead of the gifted beings we ought 

 to be. This ftict is most forcibly illustrated 

 in the general surroundings of our homes. 

 There is large room for improvement and I 

 trust the day is not far distant when a general 

 wakening up in this matter will be had 

 through the influence of the few who now 

 adorn and beautify their homes, and our 

 county will abound in tine rural scenes and 

 picturesque liomes as well as fine tobacco 

 fields and f;vt steers. The improvements need 

 not be sudden or expensive, a few evergreen 

 trees planted in the lawn would already im- 

 prove it, besides a few tlower beds would 

 make such a contrast that you will be induced 

 to plant more largely next year. Please try 

 it this spring. — liuralist. — Creswell, PemVa., 

 March ith, 1878. 



For The Lancaster Farmer. 

 THE TOBACCO FEVER. 



Tobacco raising is the main object with 

 some farmers, and very few raise none at all, 

 in our section of the country ; and much of 

 the talk among farmers is about tobacco. I 

 often noticed last summer when I went from 

 home, that whenever 1 met other people, 

 where two or three were together, the talk 

 among them was about tobacco. For my 

 part, I raise none, and my belief is that I 

 would not be doing right in raising this weed. 

 God has given us a fine country in which to 

 raise grain, and vegetables, and fruit — eatable 

 articles — and, before God, I believe it is not 

 right to desecrate the soil by raising tobacco. 

 Hundreds of acres of our best. lands are abso- 

 lutely wasted by planting them in tobacco, 

 which would produce good crops of wheat, 

 corn, or i)otatoes, and a good many other use- 

 ful and nourishing crops — articles for poor 

 people to eat. TolDacco robs us of a good deal. 



J'irit, it demands the best soil on the farm. 

 SeconiUt/, it demands the best and the largest 

 quantity of manure. Farmers haul manure 

 liberally on tobacco land, then after harvest, 

 they manure very sparingly their wheat land, 

 in order to make it reach, and often, through 

 their liberality to the tobacco it don't reach, 

 and the result is a poor crop of wheat gener- 

 ally. Now what is tobacco good for V It is 

 chewed, and snulled, and smoked ; and if 

 used to excess, it often injures, if it does not 

 ruin people physically and financially, to say 

 nothing about it morally. It would be much 

 better if they had never tasted it. Many a 

 poor man spends more for tobacco than would 

 buy fiour for a loaf of bread every day in the 

 week ; or more in a year than would buy a 

 new suit of clothing for each son in the family, 

 even if the number were half a dozen. Xot 

 long ago a poor young man bought at an auc- 

 tion eighteen pieces, or plugs, of tobacco, half 

 as long as his arm. Cheap as he considered 

 it, it amounted to over six dollars. I am 

 informed he chews a ten cent plug every daj'. 

 This is more than a good many have to pay 

 for house rent, to say nothing about the rich 

 who spend dollars where the poor only spend 

 pennies. But it often occurs that the ]wor 

 are more extravagant in this than the rich. 

 It is said in favor of tobacco that it makes a 

 good deal of work for the poor among the 

 people. So it does ; but other more necessary 

 work is neglected on account of the tobacco 

 crop. I have seen farms — and a good many 

 of them, too— where tobacco was cultivated, 

 and I have noticed that the tobacco was kept 



nice and clean, but the com .stood in high 

 grass and weeds, and a person would have a 

 hard struggle to gel through them in corn- 

 cutting. There they lost something of what 

 they had gained in tobacco. Had tliey put 

 all in corn and applied the same manure, and 

 the same cultivation as they did on their 

 tobacco, they would have had a much better 

 corn crop, and the poor man would have hail 

 labor, the soil would not have, lieen rolibed — 

 in short every man who is iviUixg to work for 

 a reasonable compensation, can always find 

 somethiny to do. Often when I wanted a hand 

 to assist me on the farm, 1 could gut none. 

 They replied, "I must tend my tob,ac('o," and 

 1 had to shift along the best way I could. 

 Especially when the corn was ripe, I wanted 

 men to cut off corn ; but no, the tobacco must 

 first be put away ; corn can stand and get dry 

 on the stalks, "tobacco is king." Tobacco, 

 it is true, brings in a great deal of money, but 

 still, on the whole, I believe it would be better 

 in the end if a t(jbacco-j>lant had never been 

 cultivated in the county. It certainly will 

 impoverish the land after a few years. Some 

 farms will be so poor that they will hardly 

 support an average family, and leave very 

 little to sell. But nearly all the people have 

 this tobacco fever, and tlierefore there may be 

 very little use in saying anything to them 

 about it. Like all fevers, I suppo.se it will 

 have to run its course; nevertheless I believe 

 it will have its crisis. Many people will not 

 believe even preachers of the gospel, when 

 they warn their flocks of approacliing danger. 

 Therefore we see tobacco-raising saints going 

 on in their way the same as sinners. There is 

 preaching Sunday after Sunday, but people do 

 not repent. They live on in sin from day to 

 day, week to week, month to month, and year 

 to year, without repentance, until the end, 

 and so it will be with tobacco farming — at 

 least, as long as there is viojiey in it. — J. G., 

 Warxcick, March, 1878. 



[Whatever the moral, physical, and econ- 

 omical status of tobacco growing and tobacco 

 manufacturing and using — or whatever may 

 be its ultimate effect upon the mental and 

 constitutional condition of men, there seems 

 to be a grave doubt whether there ever will be 

 a perfect unity of sentiment on the subject ; 

 therefore, it seems that the most we can do at 

 the present titne, is to concede to every one 

 the privilege of entertaining his own honest 

 views in regard to it. In other words, we 

 may '• agree to disagree ;" because, like manu- 

 facturing and selling or using liquor; selling 

 and buying lottery tickets ; keei)ing and run- 

 ning fast horses ; dealing in fancy or fraudu- 

 lent stocks of various kinds ; men will engage 

 in these occupations so long as they can see 

 any money in them, or they are not directly 

 contraband of law, without troubling them- 

 selves much about the abstract right or wrong 

 of the thing. Perliaps so long as men do not 

 violate their consciences, or invade the rights 

 of their neighbors, we will have to leave them 

 to their own convictions niuler the forms of 

 civil law. One glorious privilege we enjoy in 

 a land of freedom, and tliat is, if it is wrong 

 to raise tobacco there is no power to compel us 

 to do so against our own will, nor can the 

 responsibility of another's wrong doing be 

 laid on our shoulders. Nevertheless, every 

 one ought to enjoy the privilege of expressing 

 his own sentiments on the subject. — Ed.] 



For The Lancaster Farmer. 

 FERTILIZERS AND IVIANURES-THEIR 

 APPLICATION TO CORN CROPS. 



I have been for several years interested on 

 the subject of artificial fertilizers and manures 

 of all kinds, and h.ave read whatever came in 

 my way, and such works as 1 could afford to 

 purchase from time to time. 



There has Ijeen a great change for the bet- 

 ter, in the purity and strength of fertilizer.s 

 offered by all reputable dealers, the object 

 being now to give as much of the valuable in- 

 gredients as possible, as the freight and cost 

 of hauling on the lower grades is just as much 

 per ton as on the higher grades, and this of 

 itself makes the lower grades the dearer. 



No less has been the change in the maimer 

 of application. Formerly a man would pur- 

 chase a certain kind of fertilizer and with 

 perhaps the best results. The next season he 

 and his neighbors would invest more money 

 in the sanies or a different kind of fi'rtili/.er, 

 and the crop would be very poor. The dealer 

 was of course held res|ioMsil)le for this stale of 

 atfairs in furuishinga worthless article. Either 

 tliey did not know or diil not lake the trouble 

 to inquire whether the failure might not hiVve 

 been .ittriliutalile to their own lack of knowl- 

 edge of what essential plant food their soil in 

 thi^ last case, was lacking. 



The essi nlinl plant foods are three in num- 

 ber, and they are i)otasli, phosphoric acid and 

 annnouia. The latter is conii)osed of nitro- 

 gen and hydrogen, and is mentioned in .some 

 works as nitrogen, and the amount accord- 

 ing to the ratio between the nilrogen and the 

 compound, ammonia, 17 i)artsannuonia being 

 only e<pial to It parts nitrogen. 



A soil to produce a crop, must contain all 

 three of these plant fcjods, for if any single 

 one of them is enlindy absent, the plant will 

 not come to perlection. Nothing el.so can 

 be substituted for the mi.s'sing ingredient. To 

 soil containing neither of these, it would be 

 easy to supply in the right (luanlily all the 

 ingredients, but many soils contain one or two 

 of them in sullicient quantity, but which of 

 them is not known, and can be found out 

 only by actual experiment. At one time the 

 analysis of the .soil was thought to be a sure 

 method, but that i<lea is now practically dis- 

 carded iiy all reliable and honest chemists, as 

 they claim that the amoiuit of any one of 

 these ingredients is too small in comparison 

 with the amount of soil to dc'termine with 

 aecur.acy, and that the iieculiar place or places 

 where the sauqih^ was taken from, may have 

 more or less of the nece.ssary ingredients, than 

 the average would Ije in the whole field. 



No one in America has done more towards 

 forming an intelligent idea amoTjg farmers on 

 thesubject of fertilizers and ma unrest ban Prof. 

 W. O. Atwater. From his articles in Febru- 

 ary and March numbers of the American 

 AririciiJturist, we condense some experiments 

 made on corn in 1877. 



The Experiment Station, at Middleto-wn, 

 Conn., sent outlast spring, sets of fertilizers, 

 20 Ib.s. of each kiTid, consisting Dried Blood 

 (I,) superpho.sphate (II,) Pota.sh salt (III,) 

 mixture of^ I and II, mixture of I, II and III, 

 and also 2U lbs. of plaster. The amount in 

 each set was to lie applied to 10 sipiai'e rods, 

 which is at the rate of :!'J0 lbs. to the acre.* 



Mr. I). II. Birdsey, .Miildlelield. Conn., ex- 

 perimented on upland, gravelly loam, with 

 gravelly subsoil that had been in grass for 

 three jirevious years, the yield of hay esti- 

 mated at A to i ton jier acre. La.st mamn-ing 

 (with oats) leaclied ashes; previous to tliis, 

 barn manun^ and bone. 



Where I, II and I II were ajjplied the pro- 

 duct was mostly "nubbins," oidy 40 bushel 

 baskets to the acre, while the stalks were 

 small and weak ; where III and I- II ; III 

 were applied the yield was'.Mi baskets of sound 

 ears and large sound stalks ; he also applied on 

 one iiiece "yard and hen manure and ashes," 

 (.5 cords of the yard manure, ben manure and 

 ashes applied to the hills but amount not 

 stated) and the yield was .S8 baskets. 



When we examine what ingredients were 

 contained in the different t'erlilizers we find 

 that where there was no |)otash i)re.sent, the 

 result was a failure, and that the potash 

 itself was as good as any mixture containing 

 all three im^redients, and better than where 

 horse m.anure wasajiidied, besides being much 

 cheaper. In fact Mr. Bird.sey thinks the 

 horse manure cost .Sto.OO per acre (by which 

 he i)rol)ably means what he could have sold 

 the manure and asiu's and what it cost to 

 ajiply;) the potash salt (I) would liave cost 

 oulv about #7.20 i)cr .acre, and the mixture 

 (I-II -III,) .SO. 4(1 per acre. There is no 

 statement as to yield where nothing is applied. 



'The Dried Blood furuishes ammonia ; stiperphospluto, 

 phosphoric acid. 



