DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



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in about nine inches, and the team couldn't pull it. (Laughter.) I sat 

 down on the beam and began to study what next I should do. It came into 

 my mind that I could go to work and bolt a piece on the other side of 

 the beam and put the clevis to that and I would plow then. A man came 

 riding up behind me and he says, "What's the matter here? I have seen 

 you sitting on that plow ever since I came up from the river," which was 

 over two miles. "Well," I said, "I got Carlisle to put that beam in yes- 

 terday and I have run thirty feet and here I am — the mold board is out 

 of sight." I says, "I can't go back and have another beam put in." He 

 says, "Peterson down here has some cattle, and he has got a good 

 big team running on the prairie, and if you will ask him I am satisfied he 

 will let you have that team." I went down and saw him, and he says, 

 "Yes, you can have the team and welcome, but I want you to feed it well." 

 I said "All right; how much will you charge me?" He says, "Not a cent." 

 I says, "Not a cent? I won't take it that way." He says, "If you are de- 

 termined to pay I will charge you two bits a day." And so I 

 put on four horses instead of two, and began to raise the plow out a 

 little, and I went about eight inches deep and broke a hundred acres, and 

 I worked it over thoroughly, and harrowed it and sowed it the first of 

 September. I got a nephew of mine to sow it. He came to me one Sat- 

 urday evening, and he says, "Uncle, I have sowed all that grain but four 

 bushels, and I have got eight acres of land to sow." He said, "Can you 

 get some more of that kind?" I said, "No, sir; I got all the man had, 

 and it is the best wheat I could get. I want you to spread that four bush- 

 els on the eight acres." The previous sowing was done at a bushel and 

 a peck to the acre. I said, "Do you think you can sow the four bushels 

 over the eight acres?" He says, "If you say so I can." I said, "All right, 

 I don't want to mix the grain." So he sowed the four bushels on the 

 eight acres — half a bushel to the acre, and in the spring that wheat cajrie 

 up finely — came up early in the fall and did well, and the next season 

 that eight acres made seven bushels to the acre more than where we 

 sowed a bushel and a peck to the acre, and since that time I haven't 

 sowed but from 35 to 40 pounds to the acre, and if you will come over to 

 my office at any time I will show the contracts with men I rent my farm 

 to and every one is compelled to sow no more than forty pounds to the 

 acre. Four years ago I had a man on the far-m who was running it. He 

 was afraid to run my thresher. He said, "I would rather you would hire 

 a thresher and I will pay for it; I want you to look for a good .thresher." 

 I told him all rigjit, so I was traveling from Colingston to my place and 

 saw a man threshing at a farm house about fifty rods from the road. 

 I found it was a very nice thresher, sacked the grain and weighed it, 

 and when the two-bushel sack was full cut it off and it run from that sack 

 into another, and I asked him what he^ charged per hundred bushels, and 

 he said just according to the amount he threshed at each place. He said, 

 "If a man has five hundred bushels I charge him eight bushels on the 

 hundred; if he has a thousand or more I charge him seven bushels." I said 

 to him, "You are hard on the poor man, aren't you?" "Oh, no," he says, 



