109 
should be in the possession of every cultivator of it. Western farmers, 
with all their boasted confidence in the never failing nature and capability 
of prairie soil, will yet have occasion to use all the information they can 
procure in order to raise from their farms the same amount of crops that 
they produce now. It is nonsense to talk of taking ‘splendid crops’ out of 
the soil without decreasing its productive qualities. Time will show how 
true this is, unless by means of manure and other appliances, the farms 
of this country are kept up and preserved in their present healthy con¬ 
dition. 
To this day mere physical labor lias been idolized, wdiile study—scien¬ 
tific investigation—has been considered of quite too little importance by 
and among the masses. Farmers must encourage this spirit of investi¬ 
gation among themselves. If they wait for commercial cities to move 
in this matter, they will wait forever. Strange as it may seem, large 
towns do not see how closely their interests are connected with every¬ 
thing that has to do with raising crops and rearing flocks and herds. 
They never seem to consider, that when the soil is impoverished it is a 
direct injury to commerce, manufactures and trade; that it injures the 
professional occupations, and all the interests of civilized and enlightened 
society. But so it is. 
When the American armies entered Mexico during the late war they 
found the Mexicans using a pointed block of wood for a plow, attached 
to the horns of the ox that drew it by thongs of raw hide, and guided 
by a handle driven into its top. This kind of plow had been in use 
among this people ever since, and before Cortez decoyed Montezuma 
from his golden halls, fought and defeated him, and thereby became the 
Conqueror of Mexico, more than three hundred years ago. At first 
thought it would seem strange that a civilized people in the nineteenth 
century should continue to use as one of the most important implements 
of agriculture this rude antedeluvian plow. But a second thought will 
reveal the reason. Mexico has been embroiled in wars internal and ex¬ 
ternal ever since her conquest by the Spaniards. Her people have suf¬ 
fered from all the evils of these wars, not the least of which was an op¬ 
pressive taxation. On the contrary, the inhabitants of our Republic 
have been almost free from war since their first great revolution, which 
left them in the full enjoyment of Republicanism. From the organiza- 
