450 
JULY 8 
THE BUBAL HEW-YOBKER. 
papjr so that the boys should not see itl 
Possibly it “ tells some tales out of school P 
Th^re is much complaint among fanners of 
a certain class (noneof whom read the Rural,!) 
that their sons do not “take to farming;” that 
they are anxious to go to the cities, or at lea^t 
to get into other employments I alluded to 
this in a f ormer article, on “Getting a Living 
bv One’s Wits,” but loft many things unsaid. 
A’so in an article two or three years ago on 
** The Value of a D .liar,” I said some things 
and give some incidents that I may possibly 
repeat in part, here: for one of the very first 
things we farmers (indeed all fathers) should 
teach our sons is the real value of money 
The inordinate love of money- greed for gain- 
may be the “rootof all evil.” I donntpropose 
to question Scripture on this point. But 
money itself is good and necessary, and I am 
sure that one of the most essentiul things for 
a boy is a knowledge of the uses and real value 
of money as representing wealth. I think we 
should teach our sons how to earn money 
fairly and skillfully, and bow to spend It 
wjselv or lay it np, or invest it wisely by 
present self denial, that it may increase and 
become capital f< r future operations. Self- 
denial, T say, for capital alwai s represents 
somebody's labor and self denial. Our boys 
should have some chance to earn money 
fairly, at the fair price, for the labor or skill 
involved; the same price a man would receive 
for the same toil of mu-cle, guided by the 
same skill of brain or eye or hand. In this 
way th«y learn to measure the money, and 
know what it costs; and when thev have thus 
earned it bey sh ml I be left free to ine tlWr 
judgment in its *xpenditiire. It will develop 
and strengthen their judgment. We may 
and sh uld advise, but not control. The 
money should be absolutely theirs even to 
spend foolishlv—at lea-t, tor a few times. A 
d filar thus spent in ehildho d and bitterly 
regretted nmv save our children the foolish 
waste of hundreds when they are grown. If 
thev are kept in intellectual bibv chairs and 
leading-strings in youth, bow shall they walk 
when they are men? If thev are never 
allowed freedom ot choice in childhood, how 
shall they choose wisely in manhood? If they 
never exercise in Impendent judgment in 
youth, how shall they judge wisely when 
they are grown Mv mother used often to 
tell of a rich farmer’s son she knew in Mas 
aachuetts in her youth, who lacked this kind 
of training. He ne-dn’t work, oh no! his 
father was rich. He could have spending 
money, and the only li nit he could see was 
“the old mm’s” stinginess. He knew abso¬ 
lutely nothing of the cost and value of money, 
and of wise ju I gmint in spending it. At 
about 21 he succeeded to hU father’s entire 
piopertv by his father’s sudden death. At. a 
pic-nic be th ought to impress his young friends 
with his wealth and independence by spreading 
a hundred dollar lull on a pisce of b>esd and 
butter and eating it as a sandwich with great 
apparent relish I And she said he lived to see 
the day w b*-n he w as glad to get the bread and 
bu’ter without the onehundred dollar bill fora 
relish. H- died poor, because he bad not been 
taught the value and proper use of money. 
Now I think we farmers snould be more 
careful to give our children a share in the 
plans, resp msibilities, pleasures and promts of 
the firm, an i n *t simply or chiefl r in its un¬ 
interesting drudgery It was doubtless fore¬ 
ordained of heaveu that boys i-hoiild “turn 
griudstonas f ir all the axes and scythes and 
mowing-machine knives ” But an exclusive 
grin tstoue diet (or medicine) has disgusted 
more than one wide awake, active farmer’s 
biy with the whole business of farming. It 
isn’t the muscular effort. Boys like that if 
there is any fun or stnee in it. It is the 
monotony and lack of call for intelligence, 
the ceaseless round and round of the tame 
thing, “Oh, dear! ar'n't you almost donel ” 
S ippose that instead of g indstoues and the 
like all the time, we give our b iys a chance 
to work and talk with us at interesting 
work; an i let them help us rear the blooded 
calves aud colts, and have one as their 
‘•really, truly own" when it grows up. I 
think the meanest thing a man can do is to 
give his sou a c fit, aud let him call it his own 
till ids ah > it three years ol 1, and then when 
he gets hard up or in debt sell the boy's colt 
to pay Ike man's debt l Tne boy’s share in the 
partnership is the loss aud bitter disappoint¬ 
ment when the colt L sold. 
Some farmers seem to regard their boys 
as they do their colts and steei s as con¬ 
taining, or capable of just so much labor, aud 
they wo.k th-iu while younger and Jess de¬ 
veloped th m they do their colts. They “use 
them where they will do the most good” till 
they are 21, and thm turn them loose in the 
worl l with a suit of clothes an i #51. I don’t 
blame the sous of such fathers for wanting to 
get into other bu-finess I believe in giving 
the boys aud the girls, too, some iudep-ndeut 
chan to e i m in may; the egg< and chickens, 
or the bees, or the garden, with fair pay for 
what t iey raise or make. If we even buy 
vegetables of them and let them buy their 
‘ Sunday clothes," and get their spending 
monoy thus, it will give an interest in work, 
develop their judgment and make men of 
them Instead of keeping them at dull work, 
simply driving cows, carrying water, run¬ 
ning errands and the like for no pay, an t 
then giving them an occasional dime or 
nickel or q tarter of owe money isn’t it better 
to e-tablish with them early a prospective or 
actual partner-hip, to explain to them the 
wondprs and mysteries of breeding, budding, 
grafting, pruning, cultivating, selecting seed; 
to help us plant the orchards or vineyards 
while we teach them to think: “Them little 
trees that I can lift with my little hand, shall 
grow as 1 grow, and one day wave their 
branches over my head, and yield their 
gold-n fruitage to fill my cellar and my 
purse, when this farm, enriched and beauti¬ 
fied by my own labors and my father’s, shall 
b« my own f irm, and my father (far distant 
be the day I) shall have been gathered in peace 
to hi-* fathers.” 
Farmers’ sons thus trained will not rush off 
to the cities, nor beanxious for “the old man” 
to die and leave the farm for them. 
But I cannot now finish what I wished to 
say on “Farmers’ Sons.” 
£arm Ccoriomij. 
FEEDING VALUES. 
PROFESSOR K W. STEWART. 
[It is but just to mention that the following 
article was written before the publication of 
Dr. Armsby’sin the Rural of May 13 — Eds ] 
On page 211 Professor J. W. Sanborn, iu a 
paper di-play in < excellent temper, goes over 
bis reasons for di-carding the German tables 
of food values, and replies to my article as if 
he regarded me and others as sticklers for ibe 
literal and mathematical exactness of these 
tables, In this he has greatly mistaken my 
views, except where he credits me with a de¬ 
sire to get at the truth in regard to the mat¬ 
ter. Mv friend does not exaggerate the im¬ 
portance of the subject; for there are no 
specialties of agriculture that bear clo-er 
upon the interests of the farmers of the Uni¬ 
ted .States than the economical production of 
meat, milk and wool, for their aggregate 
productions exceed one thousand million dol¬ 
lars per year; and perhaps ir. is not too much 
to say that there is no subj-ct on which farm 
ers need more enlightenment. Farmers are 
constantly writing to agricultural papers to 
know which is the bettor fattening food, or 
the better food to produce milk—corn or oats, 
corn or bran, corn or linseed meal, etc., etc., 
showing that they supoose a -ingle food may 
properly form a complete ration. It is be¬ 
cause farmers have given very little stu ly 
to the relative proportion of the different con¬ 
stituents of the foods they use, that they 
need, preli ninarilv, a standard of comparison 
which will give them some idea of the pecu 
liar qualities of each food, and show them 
that a single grain or grass seldom consti¬ 
tutes a complete ration, but 1h t they are 
usually complementary to each other, aud 
that the best rations are only found in the 
combination of the quantities of several 
fools. And if they cannot be assisted by 
chemistry, which undertakes to separate and 
determine ihe elementary principles in the 
different foods, then thev may as well give up 
all expectation of aid from science and go 
back to the biliest empiricism. I have been 
very far from recommending farmers to 
blindly follow anv table of Values, for I am 
well aware that of a dozen analyses of any 
grain or grass, psruaps no two may exactly 
agree, but should all analysis be considered 
useless as a consequence ? 
Professor San >orn says that my admission 
that the German standard overesti uatod the 
comparative value of albuminoids to car 
bohydrai.es some 17 per eeut. is “enough to 
c -udemn the basis of money values.” Would 
Prof. Sanborn, then, discard tbe compass 
needle because it s jmstimss varies as much? 
Men in the woods, bewildered, have often been 
known to discredit the compass altogether, 
and, relying on their own i npressious and 
practical knowledge, they take a bee line for 
the clearing, but find they have simply 
traveled in a circle when they reach the starting 
point again. So it was in feeding animals the 
whole thing was done in a circle, no straight¬ 
ahead progress was mads till the advent of 
chemistry taught a knowledge of elementary 
principles. And then these principles re¬ 
quire 1 a proper application; aud 1 am pleased 
to see di-cu-i-uoa on this important point of 
the true applic .tion of chemistry to the feed¬ 
ing of animals. 1 f Professor Sanborn prop uses 
simply to call attention to the errors ot German 
investigators, and to men 1 those errors by 
practical demonstrations, tuat Is the true 
thing to do; aud the more we have of it the 
better. But an error does uot show the whole 
work to be valueless, and require a warning 
to farmers to cut it ail away. 
Let us take the inductive method of exam¬ 
ination. If practice has settled anything in 
feeding, it is that pasture grasses of a few 
inches of growth, in a vigorous, succulent con¬ 
dition, furnish a complete ration for herbivor¬ 
ous animals. These grasses will produce rapid 
growth, rapid fattening, a large yield of milk, 
etc. Now, a ration made up of the same com 
bination of digestible food constituents con 
tained in pasture grasses must be a model 
ration for general purpo-es of feeding this 
class of farm animals. Chemistry does enable 
us to know bv analysis the fo d elements in 
this grass ra ion. Of course, there is a great 
d ftorenee in pasture grass, but Kubn gives as 
a fair average of the digestible food constit 
uents in pasture grass the following pereetit- 
a r e: pro'ein, 2.50; carbohydrates, 14 72; fat, 
.53; nutritive ratio, 1 ;G 3 The richest pas¬ 
ture grass is given a nutritive ratio of 1:3.fi— 
the poore-t as low as 1:8. but if we consider 
the average a« having a nutritive ratio of 
1 :6.3, and if we suppose a thousand-pound 
steer to eat 100 pounds of gra«s pet* day, then 
the ration would be, protein, 2 50; carbohy¬ 
drates 14.72, «nd fat, 53 pounds—and this is 
very near the German fattening ration tor the 
first period, having slightly less cirbnby 
drates, and a little more fat. The moment we 
consider thertjff-rent grasses chemically, we 
shall find that all the differert German rations 
may be made np from grasses in the succulent 
state, and therefore the-e rations must have 
a pretty good f mutation. 
Perhaps they have erred iu prescribing a 
ration so rich in protein for the second period 
of fattening This woul 1 seem to be proved 
from tbe fact that millions of cattle, in the 
West, are fattened in Winter up na ration of 
corn stalks and 20 poun's of corn in tbe ear. 
This, if all dige-ted, would only give 1 81 of 
protein, 19 42carbohydrates, 1 04 fat, and com 
in the ear being less digpsribln, it cannot be 
considered as more than half the German 
standard of protein for the second period of 
fattening. Y*t the good result in this case 
with the reduced amount of alhuminoids or 
proteio, mav be accounted for from tbe fact 
that these Western cattle have run on rich 
pastures through the Simm a r, with so full a 
ration of muscle forming matter that their 
muscular system is in full vigor, and ns they 
are fed only a few months on corn wi h de¬ 
ficient protein, they do not suffer from it. 
But still, as cattle never fatten faster than on 
the richest pasture, it cannot be a very great 
error to consider this the b st fattening ration. 
It certainly is un ler ordinary circumstances. 
Now if we are to consider the proportions 
of the Gerinm rations as approximating to 
the true standard iu the relative amount of 
ihe different elements, ihen it would seem not 
to he difficult to reach some approximate 
standard of the relative value of protein, 
carbohydrates and fat. 
If these elements were always found in due 
proportion in all our foods then each would 
be of equal value by weight, as each would be 
present to the measure of its use whenever 
wanted. But the matter is not thus easy of 
solution. Protom and fat are not found in 
due proportion to carh ihyttoates in a large 
cl >ss of our cattle foods—and especially pro¬ 
tein, which is more imperatively neee-sary 
than fat. Every grain farm produces large 
amounts of straw having about three quarters 
as much dige-tible carbohydrates as hay, but 
very deficient in protein as well as fat. 
Modern economical m magerasnt will not 
permit this straw to he wasted, or trodden 
down in the yard, for its value as manure 
is as great when fed to cattle as when 
decomposed in theyard.and for immediate use 
greater. In a prop-r combination straw has 
more than half the food value of good hay. 
The same may be sanl of corn stover, when 
the corn is harvested at the proper time. Poor 
hay is very deficient in protein. Indeed the 
class of foods deficient in protein is very large. 
Protein then must have a value according to 
its demand. The directors of the German 
experiment stations place a value upon pio- 
tein 4.8 times as great as on carbohydrates. 
This, no doubt, is too great a relative difference 
to cuit our market, and this arises from 
our large supply of cottou-see 1 cake aud lin¬ 
seed meal, two foods extremely rich in 
nitrogen, both of which are largely imported 
into Germany, and are thus increased ia cost 
to them. 
So much for the basis of rations, and there¬ 
fore basi« of relative values. And now let us 
consider Professor Sanborn’s very peculiar 
mode of reasoning. But let me say here, that 
if his object is to be simply technical, to make 
what he deems a sharp point here, and a sharp 
poiut there, without aiding in the solut oo of 
the real question under discussion, I shall not 
cake ihe pains to foil >w all his telling little 
bits of logic. 
The very great point he made upon the 
short tallies l gave of food values from Wolff 
wa 9 , that the value put upon cotton seed, 
meal, as compared with hay, (3.6 tinier) was 
“preposterous,” aud when 1 gave a feeding 
rial iu which two pounds of cotton seed metal 
proved to he slightly more than the eqi#valent 
of seven pounds of hay, he s-«y<: “This proves 
too much....the table has not rated cotton 
seed high enough.” And tie proceeds to ask, 
Is it a logical conclusion that became t wo 
pounds of cotton seed meal fill in that combin¬ 
ation tbe place of seven pounds of hay,” 
it is “an equivalent in value?’’ Yes, we are 
talking of food value in a ration, not of mar¬ 
ket value. And he proceeds to show what he 
deems its fallacy thus: “Uniformly one 
pound of straw and one pound of clover bay 
are equal in feeding value with me (him) to 
two pounds of good hay—does it follow there¬ 
fore that straw is as valuable as hay?” Yes, 
for besavs it is “equal in feeding value” and 
that is all ihe value we are discussing. Tne 
German tables which I gave only considered 
relative feeding values. If be can show 
feeders how they can substitute straw for one- 
half of a ration of hav, reaching precisely the 
same feeding result, they will thank him for 
bis detailed facts—facts are more iu demand 
than cute pomts of logic. 
I can cheerfully say in confirmation that I 
have found the same result in feeding early- 
cut and nicely-cured clover with an equal 
weight of oat straw, but ray experience d i®9 
not confirm hi>>, that “clover alone will make 
no better animal growth than hay alone ” I 
have uniformly found clover much superior 
in growing young anim «ls. 
I hive not seen the article of Dr. Lawes 
which Prof. S inborn refers to and quotes 
from. He is an authority that all intelligent 
American farmers bold in tliehighe t respect, 
as the moat generous and pain* taking ex¬ 
perimenter for tbe p ublic good duriug more 
than a quarter of a century. His vi-ws upon 
a matter which he has made a special study 
are worthy of all consideration, but from the 
quotation made by Professor S inborn, I 
should iufer that Dr. Lawes was co sidering 
these separate foods in the light of a com¬ 
plete ration, as would appear in the following: 
“I should “-ay, looking at the composition of 
Indian meal and cotton-seed meal, the former 
would prove a better food (for fattening) than 
the latter.” Now if the question for decision 
is, which will make tie best ration of it¬ 
self—cotton seed meal or corn meal, the 
answer of every experienced feeder would he, 
“Undoubtedly, corn meal.” Here is the 
stumbling-block that seems to confuse so 
many—each food is considered as if it were a 
complete ration. Cotton seed meal is only a 
verv partial and very unbalanced food in 
itself— a m ich less com t dele ration than corn 
meal. The latter is only deficient iu protein 
and some mineral constituents, while the for¬ 
mer is ranch more deficient iu carbohydrates, 
and is wholly unfit to feed as a ration by it¬ 
self. Its great value is in making np the de- 
fleimcics of other foods—being complemen¬ 
tary to a large class of fools, consisting 
princip illy of c irbohydrates. The same may 
be said in a less degree of linseed meal. 
This same d ifi julty seems to have confused 
Professor Sanborn in trying to reach the com¬ 
parative value of foods. He s«ys: “In his 
combination each gives value to the other, 
and «o in Professor Stewart’s trial, the straw 
gave the cotton seed meal a value that it 
would not have had if tod with hav or in 
other places, and other fodders couid have 
been put in place of cotton seed meal end 
would have given the same growth at the 
same cost.” Just so, anil the cotton seed meal 
gave the straw an immensely increased value. 
And this is pr. cicely what intelligent feeding 
nuu-t do—use complementary foods to balance 
each other. 
But it is plain that Professor Sanborn per¬ 
sists in considering the value of each food as 
a ration by itself. Let us apply it to human 
foods. What is the comparative food value 
of corn starch and beet steak? Of sugar 
and oatmeal? Of Indian corn and beaus? 
Coni starch and sugar will notsustaiu humun 
life, and therefore, considered as a complete 
diet, have no value. Beef steak comes uearer 
being a life sustaining diet, but ueeds the aid 
of starch and carbohydrates. No one would 
think of making up the human diet of such 
single foods, but they are all considered in 
their relations to each other. But let us see 
how the different elements are valued in hu¬ 
man foods. Beef brings from three to four 
times the price of the best wheat flour. Beans 
are valued twice as much as wheat and three 
times as mu-’h as coru. Oat meal for table 
use briogs 25 to 50 per cent, more than flour; 
and generally human food in its uommufac- 
tured condition brings a price in proportion 
to the protein it contains. So the German basis 
of food values hold* in human foods as well. 
And let me close by sajing that theb^sfc 
feeders of my acquaintance, and who succeed 
best, are those who intelligently select their 
cattle foods upon the chemical basis, or, not 
well understanding this basis, select a va¬ 
riety of foods and thus fully meet the wants 
of their animals. 
Professor Sanborn has been doing a good 
work in his agricultural department, and I 
