No. 4.] FEEDING OF DAIRY COWS. 141 



how seriously it affects you down here. I will take time to 

 suggest one illustration. I can think of a boy living on a 

 farm, who, after putting in a real hard day at exhausting 

 work binding grain or pitching hay, would come home 

 without any fear of meeting anybody on the road, — not 

 feeling that he wanted to shrink away out of sight and 

 apologize for the condition of his person or of his clothes. 

 I have watched that same boy, proud, manly, self-possessed, 

 modest, noble and strong, — typical of the boy who lives on 

 the farm on both sides of the boundary line, the boy who 

 does all of his work well. I have seen the same boy, when 

 he had nothing to do on the farm except to idle at 

 the unremunerative chores all winter. When anybody 

 would come to see him then, his manliness had shrunken 

 and he would skulk to the barn and pretend that he was 

 busy, to nurse into life the high quality of self-respect that 

 comes from being usefully diligent. Farmers should jirovide 

 paying employment for themselves and their men and their 

 boys during the winter, through the manufacturing into 

 milk, bacon, etc., of the primitive products obtained from 

 their fields in summer. 



Then, having cows milking in the winter, how shall we 

 grow crops to cost ourselves the least for the milk we get 

 back from them ? Indian corn is perhaps the best crop of 

 the continent for that purpose. It is a sun plant, a great 

 accumulator of energy, a great conserver of energy for the 

 farmers of this whole land. I would like to tell you of what 

 magnificent, what stupendous service is rendered to man- 

 kind l)y corn plants, but knowledge and language alike fail 

 me. They enable man to realize upon the powers of sun 

 and air for his own service. 



The air is the other storehouse of plant food. Between 

 ninety-two and ninety-eight per cent of all the sul)stances 

 of plants conies from the air. The man who farms well will 

 have his plants grow a suitable distance apart, as far as 

 practicable, in order that the air may circulate freely and 

 the sun shine in brightly, that the plants may get from the 

 air the food it contains for them. This is one reason why 

 it does not pay a man to grow a crop of broadcast corn ; the 

 stalks are so close together that there is not enough cir- 



