THIRTY-FIFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 25 



have been traveling through your country year after year since 

 then. I know you have the greatest corn spot on the face of 

 the earth. But, friends, this is not going to be that way always. 

 Bear that point in mind. 



I attended a State Farmer's Institute at one time at Bloom- 

 ington nine years ago. One of the farmers in that immediate 

 vicinity — I want to say a soil fertility robber — said: "We 

 needn't worry about our soil fertility, we got fourteen feet of 

 muck under us, and that will last from now until doomsday." He 

 said further : "When our soil becomes exhausted, all we need to 

 do is to stir up a little of the bottom and bring it to the top, and 

 raise another crop of corn." I have been wondering what kind 

 of a subsoil he would find when he struck the last fourteen feet. 

 I am reminded of a little incident that happened to Mr. Suden- 

 dorf. A man came in one day and said, "Well, this butter color 

 is not worth a continental, used it all I could." Sudendorf says 

 to him, "Don't you ever go into the woods, my friend, the squir- 

 rels would eat you." He looked at him and said, "Why?" "Be- 

 cause you are nutty." That's the same way with that fellow. 

 He is wrong, entirely wrong. 



I want to take this problem up from the standpoint of soil 

 fertility. The chemist says that when you sell a ton of wheat, 

 you are selling $8.65 worth of fertility. If you are selling a ton 

 of corn you are selling $6.50 of fertility. In other words, you 

 are cutting off so much of your farm and selling it. He also 

 tells us, a ton of butter — I mean clean butter — you are selling 

 36 cents worth of fertility; a product that is valued at $500 a 

 ton today, and more than that. Compare that. You are selling 

 36 cents worth of fertility when you are selling $500 worth of 

 products, and in the case of corn or wheat, you are selling from 

 six to eight dollars worth of fertility for anything ranging from 

 $20 to $40 a ton. There is the basis of my argument today. I 

 want you to bear that in mind. 



How does it come, that by means of dairying, which is the 

 highest form of farming today, we can conserve the fertility of 

 the soil ? We raise the corn, the clover hay. W r e feed it to the 



