No. 4.] EASTERN AND WESTERN FARMING. 173 



corn. Sulky cultivators will repress the weeds for another 

 dollar. One dollar an acre will cut it up, and one and one- 

 half to three dollars will house it, according to where it goes, 

 — into the mow or silo. As the husker and the grinder will 

 keep hands off of this crop, the total cost will be $17.10 

 per acre. The western farmer will not grow it materially 

 cheaper. The average farmer of the west no cheaper. If 

 this is true, he can make beef but little if any cheaper, 

 probably no cheaper when delivered in our markets. 



Let us take another look at this corn question. The 

 Illinois farmer grows twenty-six and one-tenth bushels (I 

 do not understand this average farmer nor the statistics 

 relating to him, for those whom I know grow more than 

 this per acre) ; if we grow fifty bushels by the use of chemi- 

 cals, we ol)tain twenty-three and nine-tenths bushels larger 

 crop per acre for the expenditure often dollars for chemicals. 

 Now, this excess crop costs but little more per bushel than 

 the twenty-six bushels grown without chemicals by the 

 Illinois farmer, as all the cost of tillage is to be paid by him 

 for the small crop. 



Another factor comes to our assistance, and that is the 

 superior value of the fodder in New England. Indeed, on 

 most western farms the fodder is substantially thrown away, 

 being fed off of the ground by cattle after the corn has been 

 snapped. By this system ten acres is estimated to feed a 

 steer for the winter, while one acre would furnish the food 

 in New England by our system. Some of ni}'' hearers no 

 doubt have learned that the western farmer is beginning to 

 use chemicals. Armed with our M'eapons, will they not 

 meet us on equal terms in the manuring of crops ? Chemicals 

 are the insidious foe of the farmers bordering either side of 

 the INIississippi and the Missouri rivers. 



Years ao;o I estimated for Missouri students the cost of 

 chemicals to raise forty acres of corn of fifty bushels per 

 acre, forty acres of wheat of twenty-five bushels per acre and 

 twenty acres of hay of two tons to the acre, this being some- 

 thing like the distribution of crops that the tillage farmer of 

 the west makes. Wheat at seventy-six cents per bushel, 

 corn at twenty-five cents per bushel, hay at six dollars per 

 ton, will give a return for all these crops for one hundred 



