12 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
large proportion of the farmers of Wisconsin have, as yet, 
scarcely began to appreciate. They still turn their backs upon 
the important doctrine of rotation of crops, and are found, as 
they were ten years ago, growing wheat to the injury of their 
soil and the neglect of more remunerative methods of farming. 
In condemnation of this ruinous, if not criminal, contempt 
of both science and common sense, we cannot forbear to add 
the important testimony of the Honorable Horace Capron, 
National Commissioner of Agriculture, as given to the coun¬ 
try in an address delivered by him at the last Illinois State 
Tair: 
“ Your soil is wonderfully fertile. You may be disposed to consider it 
inexhaustible. It is an injurious if not a fatal error. The coffers of the 
most opulent treasury, constantly drawn upon, will eventually become 
empty. Statistics of production attest that repeated crops of wheat, on 
your best lands, show rapid deterioration; every crop taken from the soil, 
with no return, reduces the capacity of the farm for production in arithme¬ 
tical ratio, and its capacity for profit in geometrical ratio. Such a course 
may give you, for a time, a little more ‘ ready money,’ but you are certainly 
robbing your heirs; it is doubly difficult to renovate them; how difficult, 
you can only realize after trial. I have had a full experience of this in 
Maryland, having brought the value of a thousand acres, after years of 
labor and toil, from $10 up to $60 per acre, and repaid its cost. The differ¬ 
ence between its original and improved yield in that period, which repre¬ 
sents the measure of loss brought by former mismanagement, would have 
been a fortune in itself. I can point out farms in Maryland, thirty years 
ago reduced to barrenness and the meager value of $2 per acre, through 
repeated cropping of corn and tobacco, which are now richly worth $80, 
through the influence of clover, fertilizers, regular rotations, and judicious 
management generally. Then they could only yield a miserable support to 
their proprietors; now they maintain their owners in comfort and even lux¬ 
ury. It has been estimated that one hundred millions of acres of these 
worn-out lands have been thrown out of cultivation in the south. Beware 
of a similar experience in the west; you are on the road to the same ruin, 
which can only be averted by a prompt use of restorative agencies, and the 
exercise of an enlightened judgment in all the operations of your agricul¬ 
ture.” 
The wheat crop of 1870 is estimated by the Agricultural 
Department to have been 18.4 bushels per acre, or very nearly 
two bushels less per acre than in 1869, when, according to the 
census returns, the total product was 25,323,647 bushels. 
