PREFACE 
Mushrooms and their extensive and profitable culture 
should concern every one. For home consumption they 
are a healthful and grateful food, and for market, when 
successfully grown, they become a most profitable crop. 
We can have in America the best market in the world 
for fresh mushrooms; the demand for them is increas¬ 
ing, and the supply has always been inadequate. The 
price for them here is more than double that paid in 
any other country, and we have no fear of foreign com¬ 
petition, for all attempts, so far, to import fresh mush¬ 
rooms from Europe have been unsuccessful. 
In the most prosperous and progressive of all coun¬ 
tries, with a population of nearly seventy millions of 
people alert to every profitable, legitimate business, 
mushroom-growing, one of the simplest and most re¬ 
munerative of industries, is almost unknown. The 
market grower already engaged in growing mushrooms 
appreciates his situation and zealously guards his meth¬ 
ods of cultivation from the public. This only incites 
interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming 
alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and 
an earnest demand has been created for information 
about growing them. 
The raising of mushrooms is within the reach of 
nearly every one. Good materials to work with and 
careful attention to all practical details should give good 
returns. The industry is one in which women and 
children can take part as well as men. It furnishes 
indoor employment in winter, and there is very little 
hard labor attached to it, while it can be made subsid¬ 
iary to almost any other business, and even a recreation 
as well as a source of profit. 
In this book the endeavor has been, even at the risk 
of repetition, to make the best methods as plain as pos- 
