The American farmer, more especiall}^ the western farm- 

 er, has had an extraordinary and self-evident illustration 

 of the universal law of supply and demand. In the past 

 it has been intimated, if not said, that Wall Street controls 

 the price of silver, silver controls the price of wheat, the 

 price of wheat controls the farmei', therefore Wall 

 Street was to blame for the ills and misfortunes of the 

 farmer. This has been exploded by silver steadily declin- 

 ing, and at the same time wheat rapidly advancing toil. 00 

 and over. This advance in wheat, a rough estimate and 

 probably not too great, puts the increased price of farm 

 products in the United States at 1500,000,000. This is a 

 stupendous sum, it is nearl}- equal to the nation's interest 

 bearing debt, it is more than the entire volume of green- 

 backs now in existence or the entire mass of silver dollars 

 coined since the foundation of the republic. It is not 

 strange therefore that the farmers in the West are running 

 away from Bryanism. 



This is decidedly an American farmers' year. Grain 

 can never be grown in Massachusetts so cheaply nor so 

 abundantly as in the west. Consequentlj'' the New England 

 farmer has to pay his attention to the hay crop and kitchen 

 gardening, and in order to succeed it is not sufficient to be 

 a practical farmer, but it is necessary, especially in our 

 soil, to acquire a knowledge of agricultural chemistry. 

 Sir Humphrey Davy may be said to have opened the way 

 to progress and improvement in this direction in the earl}^ 

 part of the century, yet it was not till 1840 that Liebig 

 announced a proposition, i. e. to manure an acre of land 

 with forty pounds of bone dust, that awakened the atten- 

 tion of intelligent farmers to the importance of applying 

 the results of chemical investigation and opening the way 

 to the whole system of concentrated fertilizers, which has 

 grown to enormous proportions and affected the commerce 

 of the whole world. 



The national government has come to the aid of the 



