178 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



money and brains as there has been at some other times, l)ut 

 there isn't in any other branch. Farming isn't the only 

 business where times are hard, and the other fellow gets the 

 better end of the business and all the profit. It is a general 

 complaint in all business. There are more business failures 

 in the cities than in the country. There is heavier competi- 

 tion and more injustice in the business of the people in the 

 city than in the business of farming ; but we are feeling the 

 squeeze which business men in other lines have felt before. 

 Farming used to be regarded as a thing by itself, and men 

 went into one of the learned professions, or business, or 

 farming, as if farming was anything liut business. But it is 

 business, and when you go into business you must expect to 

 meet competition, where in the long run the best man wins. 

 I should advise a young man, if he was in the tobacco region 

 and had a fair liking for growing it, that there was a good 

 prospect for him. If he preferred dairjdng, and didn't care 

 for tobacco I should say he was a fool to touch tobacco. Go 

 into the thing you understand and love, and then, if you 

 have a business head, you will make a success of it. 



Question. Isn't it a great deal more work now than it 

 was forty years ago? 



Dr. Jenkins. Yes ; because the market before would take 

 anj^thing that was called tobacco, and at about one price, and 

 handle it as if it were all alike. Its Inirning qualities, or its 

 color or taste, didn't make any diflerence, but now the re- 

 quirements are much different. 



Professor Brooks. That is almost equally true of every 

 trade. The apples that used to be raised and sold at a profit 

 cannot be sold at a profit now. The milk of the olden times 

 doesn't seem to quite fill the bill. Toljacco raising isn't an 

 exception. 



Mr. A. Wilson (of Hadle}^). Do the different kinds of 

 cover-crops have any particular effect on the color of the 

 leaf ? I am speaking of rye and clover, and so forth. 



Dr. Jenkins. In the tobacco meetings which we have in 

 Connecticut, some one grower always says that rj^e sours the 

 land ; then other growers say that they have used it for ten, 

 twenty or thirty years, and it does not sour the land. I 



