STABLE AND BARNYARD MANURE 87 
nances in order to get stable litter removed from the alleys 
of this town before it became a nuisance to public health. 
When it comes to appreciating the value of stable manure, 
the eastern farmer has shown himself more aggressive than 
the Corn Belt farmer. In New England manure has had a 
market value for several generations past. The fact that the 
eastern farmer finds it necessary to manure his land while 
some of the western farms are fertile enough to grow a crop 
without manure is no excuse for the Corn Belt farmer. While 
it is still possible for us to grow a crop without first apply- 
ing manures or fertilizers it is also true that a ton of manure 
applied to the black prairie land of Illinois will increase the 
yield of corn, wheat and oats more bushels than would be 
the case if the manure were applied to thin, hilly land. With 
farm crops bringing the present good prices we can surely 
afford to be as careful in saving and as painstaking in apply- 
ing manures as can our eastern brothers. The New England 
farmer has been driven by necessity to increase the fertility 
of his soil. In fact, much of the secret of every eastern 
farmer’s success is to save all the manure and return it to 
the soil. Many of us in the West are still living off the fat 
of the land and some of us will continue to mine our soils 
until the fertility is completely exhausted. 
How SHovuLD MANuRE BE APPLIED? 
Every Corn Belt farmer who is farming as much as one 
hundred and sixty acres can afford to own a manure spreader. 
The spreader distributes the manure more evenly and over 
a larger area than is possible when applied by hand. We 
believe that two tons applied with a spreader will go as far 
as three tons applied in any other manner. If the farm 
produces only one hundred tons of stable manure in a year 
and it is made to go as far as one hundred and fifty tons 
applied by hand, there has been a saving of fifty tons of 
