57 
admirably to the advantage of all the products. The continuous cultivation of a sin- 
gle crop must eventually exhaust the soil of the constitueuts for its profitable growth, 
while it is well known that the finest wheat crops were raised the past year on worn- 
out and abandoned grain-fields which had been resuscitated by a couple of years' rest 
in grass. It seems almost culpable to import corn, hogs, beans, and other products 
which can be grown here to perfection. 
What Governor Pillsbury says of Minnesota is equally true of a very 
large portion of the country subject to locust injury. The advantage 
of growing more stock is especially obvious in some sections, not only 
as a means of best utilizing the surplus corn, but to avoid sweeping 
disaster; for when the locusts are so thick as to entirely sweep off cul- 
tivated crops, the wild prairie-grass is seldom so badly affected that it 
will not support stock. 
LEGISLATION. 
Too much stress can not be laid on the advantage of cooperation 
and concert of action, and legislation both to induce and oblige action 
is important. In every community there are those who persist in doing 
nothing to prevent locust injury. These indifferents frequently bring 
ruin not only upon themselves but upon more persevering neighbors, 
and any law will prove beneficial that will oblige every able-bodied man 
to work one or more days, either in the fall in destroying the eggs, or in 
the spring in killing the young insects, whenever the township trustees, 
at the request of a given number of citizens of the township, may call 
them to such work under sf)ecial provisions similar to those of existing 
road laws. 
In reference to bounty laws, the experience of Minnesota, where they 
were in force in some counties in 1875, is valuable, and the State com- 
missioners did not hesitate to recommend the system after the county 
trials, imperfect as they were and commenced as they were, in most 
cases, too late in the season. It was clearly shown that in one township 
$30,000 worth of crops was saved by an expenditure of $0,000. Nicollet 
County paid $25,053 for 25.053 bushels of locusts, but the price paid by 
other counties was higher; in fact, much too high. In 1877 the bounty 
system was less effective, and indeed proved more or less a failure. 
"As a means of defense,' 7 writes Mr. Whitman, " it would have proved 
useless in some cases and needless in others ; as a matter of relief or 
reimbursement for injury it would have gone in a large measure to help 
those who are already repaid by an abundant harvest." 
Governor Pillsbury, in his annual message for 1877, speaks of the 
Minnesota bounty law, published further on, in the following rather 
severe terms : 
These acts were approved by me with much reluctance, and not until I had stren- 
uously but unavailiugly endeavored to influence a correction iu the act first named 
of what I deemed ill-advised provisions of a serious character. Prior to any move- 
ment for the practical operation of these laws, I received numerous statements from 
authoritative sources in all quarters of the infested regions, remonstrating against 
