REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 
75 
INDUSTRIAL WANTS OF WISCONSIN. 
The industrial needs of the State have been incidentally 
considered in the discussion of “Industrial Condition;” but it 
may, nevertheless, be well to give them in this place a more 
positive statement in the form of a connected summary, leav¬ 
ing their elaborate discussion for subsequent reports. 
THE AGRICULTURE OF THE STATE NEEDS, 
First, a recognition of the possible exhaustion of its fertile 
soils. The fallacy of supposing them capable of continuing, 
for an unlimited period, to yield immense crops of grain with 
but little co-operation on the part of the husbandman is held 
— at least practiced upon — by our farmers, in common with 
those of the other Western States, and it is feared that the 
great crops of the past year may have a tendency to confirm 
them in this serious error. If we would improve rather than 
deteriorate our^oils, the farmers of the State must learn: 
1. To rotate their crops. There is no soil that'will yield as 
good returns, through a long succession of years, when cropped 
without change, as if cultivated with a judicious system of 
rotation. 
2. To practice, as far as possible, the economical drainage 
of their lands. It will doubtless be years before thorough 
drainage, such as is common in the old world and is beginning 
to be common in some of the older Eastern States, will be 
practicable here. Still, an appreciation of the advantages of 
a warm, dry and well-aerated soil would lead to more general 
better preparation of our soils in this respect. 
3. To save and apply their manures. The building of barns 
in locations where the manures must be washed down and 
irretrievably lost, the moving of barns to get rid of the incon¬ 
venience of miry accumulations, and the burning of straw 
stacks, have been practiced to a shameful extent and are yet 
but too common. Let our farmers faithfully attend to this 
matter of restoring to their lands as much as possible of what 
they remove in the crops grown, and also when practicable 
avail themselves of the rich supplies of muck, marsh mud^ 
