66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. IPub. Doc. 



father bad made oli the whole farm iu the past ten years. The 

 boy's hands or arms were no stronger, neither did he work 

 harder than his father had worked, but he won because he 

 more intelligently guided the labor of those hands. In farm 

 management, whether the farmer lives east or west, north or 

 south, there are two things that he should ever keep before 

 him: first, that he should sell as many dollars' worth of 

 product off his farm each year as he can, which shall carry 

 with it the largest per cent of profit possible ; second, that he 

 shall maintain or increase the fertility of his farm so that he 

 may go on selling more dollars' worth of }U"oduct, which shall 

 carry with it a larger per cent of profit. 



xVs to my first statement, the frutli is almost self-evident. 

 If we are to progress in the world and ha\e better things, and 

 to make better connnunities, we must do it largely from the 

 l)rolits in our business. In fact, the profit that wc make in a 

 year measures, in a commercial way, the value of that year 

 of our life, and surely we ought to feel that our life is of 

 sufficient value to urge us on to get as much for it as we can. 



As to the second proposition. A man having a warranty 

 deed for an 80-acre farm has a legal right to mine it; or, in 

 other words, to blight it so that those who come after him 

 shall not be able to make a living from it. I do not believe 

 that he has a moral right to do this. He owes it to his chil- 

 dren, to his community, to his State and to his nation to so 

 handle his farm that a fair share of the great unborn armies of 

 the future shall be able to make a living from it. 



Again, as to my first proposition. One source of income 

 or profit to the farmer is crop production. We owe it to our- 

 selves to know which crop is best fitted to our land, our climate 

 and our conditions, and then strive to so handle this crop that 

 we shall make the largest possible profit from it. I have 

 learned that in ])rodueing a crop, after one gets a sufficiently 

 large crop to pay for the cost of production, it requires but a 

 little larger crop to furnish us G per cent j^rofit ; and it requires 

 but just a little larger crop than this to double the profit, and 

 just a little more will triple the profit. Let me illustrate that 

 by the corn cro]5. I do not care to have you remember the 

 figures I give you ; they Avould be of no value to you, as they 



