No. 4.] COMMERCIAL PLANT FOOD. 79 



better it is than any other fertilizer. This, with others, is 

 l)ul)lished in pamphlet ibrin for distribution. Then you 

 take up another pamphlet, and you find another fertilizer 

 with testimonials of others who have used it for their 

 l)otatoes, and they have all found it to be the best ; and so 

 you go on with perhaps twenty of them ; and it seems to 

 me that the farmers ought to wake up to the fact that they 

 themselves have something to do in regard to this matter. 

 I speak on this subject perhaps more feelingly because I 

 have had some experience in mixing fertilizers for plant 

 growth, and the fact that at first I went wrong, that I put 

 onto my land materials that the crop did not want, simply 

 because I had in a measure been led astray by the opinion 

 of others who seemed to take the ground that they knew 

 what everybody wanted. I went into a series of experi- 

 ments to test my soil, — just wdiat every farmer present 

 ought to do before he buys a single ton of commercial fer- 

 tilizer. If he is going to use them, he ought to understand 

 something about the character of his soil. He ought to 

 understand whether he needs to buy a large proportion of 

 nitrogen, of phosphoric acid or of potash. I found that 

 I was spending money, which was worse than thrown 

 away, by using mixtures which I had l)een told were all 

 right. I tested my soil by careful experiments, — experi- 

 ments which can be tried by you all if you will take the 

 separate raw materials and put them on in strips and then 

 make different combinations. You are intelligent enough 

 to do this. If you are not, then let me say to you, do not 

 buy commercial fertilizers, but stick to barn manure, and 

 do only that amount of farming which you can do by using 

 the fertilizers from your OAvn farm. Do not })ay money for 

 commercial fertilizers that you do not understand, that you 

 cannot look on the tag of the bag and with your pencil cast 

 up the value of the contents of the bag. I cannot agree 

 with my friend Mr. Ware that there should l)e legislation 

 to permit the farmers to be ignorant. I want that legisla- 

 tion which will have a tendency to lift them up to a higher 

 level, and I do not care if it compels them to be more 

 intelligent than they now are. My advice to the farmers 

 has always been, *' Never touch a bug of commercial fer- 



