Wisconsin State Agricultural Society . 131 
comparefl with the emptiness of our bins. We are liable to see it 
lower. We must not be too selfish; a low price for food is a great 
blessing to multitudes whose needs are greater than ours. We 
must not indulge ourselves in looking upon it as a calamity. What 
we want is to raise our crops so surely that they may still be profi¬ 
table. The proceeds of an abundant crop of wheat distributed over 
our state, even at present prices, would quicken all of our indus¬ 
tries into new life. 
This result cannot be produced by urging those who are in the 
channel of improvement, into higher methods, so surely as it can by 
quickening the great mass of our farmers into even moderate im¬ 
provement. * * * That there are ways by which individuals 
may prosper amid general depression, I do not doubt. It is in the 
midst of hard times for the masses that many fortunes are made. 
By good management, a man may build up his own farm at the 
expense of his neighborhood, but I am not laboring in this interest. 
If I suggest a method which is not as available to the humblest 
farmer as to the most fore-handed, I wish to be rebuked for it. We 
need not hope for general improvement but through the use of 
simple and practical means which lie within the reach of all. 
There is nothing singular in our case. We are but repeating 
the history of all the agriculture of which we have knowledge. 
Rich land carelessly farmed until exhausted, then by compulsion, 
improved methods, by which the land is often restored to more 
than its original fertility. 
If the people will it, they have now reached the bottom of the 
scale, and may date improvement from the present moment, or they 
may descend lower and find improvement still more difficult. If 
simple and efficacious means of improvement exist, it is important 
that we find them. Still there are some things settled with abso¬ 
lute certainty which we are slow to learn. I think I can safely say, 
after extensive reading and close observation as to the methods by 
which exhausted lands are restored, that in all lands and in all 
times the use of clover, or its equivalent, has been the one simple 
and sure way which has never failed; and if it will restore that 
which is worn, it will be the most effectual method of preventing 
that entire exhaustion which is so much to be deprecated, for the 
simple reason that the greater contains the less. 
There may be many adjuncts to the use of clover. I have seen 
