Show OUR FARMER STATE STATESMAN washington D C cauly july 3 oneff the most interesting characters in president cleveland Clev elands Is cabinet is the non hon julius sterling morton the new secretary ol of agriculture he hasi has come to washington with a brain braia well sharpened by its contract with the business of the th ewest west he brings new light into the agricultural department and he promises ot of uncle husks to turn some jerry institutions upside down I 1 spent an evening this week with him in in his bachelor quarters at the cochran hotel know a widower and he he is you lives very quietly though he is not averse to society and is one ot of the most companionable of men let me tell you how he looks gov morton is is about five feet seven inches high and lie he weighs just about pounds his shoulders are broad and his limbs are clean cut he does not look to be wore more than fifty years of age but he is over sixty and is still in in his prime he has a light comple complexion xion light gray hair and a gray mustache with the shadow shining out from under of goatee a eray ray it ae he has as a high forehead a strong and olea sant mouth he dresses more like a new man than the ty typical p ica I 1 farmer armer statesman and he would not be out of place in an any v crowd of gentlemen in new york or chicago when I 1 called upon him he was dressed in a we well ll cut business suit of light gray and a pair of fashionable yellow shoes shone out below his well creased pantaloons I 1 A diamond as large as the end of my thumb sparkled in in a r ring ing i on one of the fingers of his left hand and a costly scarf scarf pin had bad a place in his neck tie the contrast between him and uncle terry jerry rusk whom I 1 saw just before he left washington was striking and as I 1 sad good day I 1 thought his appearance gave ave the lie to the statement that teat there V aft no money in in farming in nebraska and band I 1 asked basked mr secretary is is it true that the farmers are ruined in the west and the days of money making for them have gone forever THE FARMERS prosperous AND NOT POOR 1 I think not replied the secretary ot of a agriculture agn culture with a smile of all classes in the united states today it seems to me that the farmers havethe have the best outlook they are not half so badly off as they have been painted and many of them are making money of course there are failures but of all the busi bosi nesses of the united states farming is the least liable to fail and there are am more successes in isthan in almost any other business take the dry goods business 97 per cent of the men who go into it bec become ome bankrupt and the proportion of failures in all mercantile pursuits is very large As to farming I 1 know hundreds of instances of success right around me in nebraska one of my neighbors came out west with only seventy five cents he bought his land on time and he now owns 1800 acres he is the president of a bank and is rich and all of his bis possessions came out of the soil around him you will find many poor farmers they came to the same place with more money and better prospects but they were shiftless they have not stuck to their work they have left their farms to sell patent rights and have been inveigled into schemes to make money fast without work no business can succeed without thrift energy and brains pure muscle will not make a good farmer or a good farm the land has got to be with the brains of the owner in order to make it pay the average farmer is better off now than he has ever been and I 1 believe he will continue to improve OUR FUTURE NABOBS why do you vou think so I 1 asked it is thi the only logical conclusion v was vas the reply the government lanas lands are nearly all taken up slovenly farming is wearing out some of the best farms of the country and the limit of cultivable lands has been nearly reached we double our population every twenty five years in a quarter of a century we will have to feed instead of and their food is all to come from the soil of the farmer the result is that lands must rise and farm products will increase in in price the law of supply and demand makes it certain that farm property will be the most valuable of all property in the future and the farmers will be the nabobs nabors MONEY IN NEW ENGLAND FARMS will we have larv large farms or small farms in the future mr r secretary I 1 asked 1 I think ta the he tendency is toward small farms our farms will be more like those of france the land will be better tilled and the deserted farms will be brug brought ht up up take the abandoned farms of new england I 1 believe that the next great emigration of our farmers will be to the now new england states land has dropped in certain parts of these states so that you can buy tracts which were once cultivated for from five to seven dollars pir per acre these lands have been abandoned by their owners going to the west they have lain idle tor for years and nature has been re fertilizing them they are now covered with undergrowth and they will wih have to be cleared again but well farmed they will produce profitably and within the past lew few years capitalists and others have been buying them I 1 know a number of rich men who have large tracts in new england austin corbin recently bought aar acres es and morison the famous bridge builder has just purchased a large tract yes concluded the secretary emphatically emphatic 1 I look for the resurrection of new england and it will again blossom as the rose NO DEAD LANDS how about the lands of the south I 1 suppose many of them have been killed by bad farming no they are not killed replied secretary morton and proper fertilization and work will again bring them into bearing speaking about killing the soil makes me think of an old missourian who came up into nebraska to bu buy 2 some land he looked about WE with doubting eyes on the dif different terent farms of my neighborhood until some of the agents wondered whether he knew any thing about land and they asked him whether he had ever farmed he replied blied flied yes I 1 hev aggravated the soil for or ni nigh i h onto thirty years I 1 this is the trouble trouble with the south the soil has been badly aggravated though it has not been killed do you think the south will over ever equal the north as an agricultural country 1 I doubt it was the reply I cuma clim tic influences are such that the people of the south will not work like we do in the north they can get along with less work and they will do it immigration wont change this and the yankees who go down there lose their grit in five years vears and are as slow as their southern neighbors climate has a great deal to do with the making of men and beasts sometimes I 1 think it has everything todo to do take the cattle of texas I 1 was down there not long ago and I 1 saw those these great texas stews steers all skin bones bone and horns they abeso areso are 80 I 1 gaunt that you can scrape their boaen I 1 and put all the swat meat into their horns hoew As I 1 looked at them I 1 asked the people why they did not raise durham cattle they replied that they had tried the experiment but that the old cattle quickly died and that their offspring grew to be like the others in a year or so SECRETARY MORTONS HERD BOOK by the way mr secretary where does your family come from you are scotch are you not 1 I come of scotch english ancestry was the reply 1 I was just looking over my herd book at the department today 1 I mean my genealogical record it makes my family angry to have me call it my herd book well I 1 found that one of my ancestors sold the mayflower 11 ower to the pilgrims and he came over himself on the next ship the family drifted from new england to new york and my father went from new york to michigan and settled in detroit HIS COLLEGE DAYS secretary morton is a well educated man he talks fluently using the best of en english lish and my chat with him s showed howelle me that his studies had covered a wide range during it I 1 asked him where he had gone to school and he re replied elied the first part of my education was acquired at the michigan university at ann arbor I 1 was there two years and then left on account of the action of the colle college ge as to fraternities the faculty decided to wipe out the greek letter societies and in wiping them out they wiped me out I 1 was a member of the chi fraternity the one to which tom palmer the ex united states senator and minister to spain melville W fuller the chief justice of the supreme court and don dickinson belonged we were all boys together but palmer had at this time left college and taken a trip to spain after leaving ann arbor I 1 went to union college at schenectady N Y which was then presided over by dr eliphalet nott and finished my education there HIS WEDDING JOURNEY how old were you when you went west 1 41 I was just about twenty two was the reply 1 I went west on my wedding tour and the trip to nebraska at that time was a far greater undertaking than it is now we went by rail from chicago ko alton on the mississippi river there was no such a thing as a sleeper at that time and we had to sit up all the way from alton we went by steamer to st louis and from st louis u up the missouri to st joseph by stearn steamboat here we got a stage sta e and rode on to council bluffs the fhe trip took about eight days and nights and it was full of hardships it could be made now in about a day we settled first at bellevue and the next spring we moved to nebraska city where we took up the quarter section A on which I 1 now live I 1 have added a little to it but it is the same ground that I 1 got from the government thirty eight years ago we began life in a log cabin and my boy by the way has just had a picture of this cabin made in connection with some others on a sheet advertising his cereal and starch manufactory under the cabin he has bas put the words the house in which the president of the company began business As I 1 looked at it I 1 asked him what business he had carried on in the cabin and he replied 1 I suppose you might call it a milking business SECRETARY MORTONS ROMANCE I 1 doubt whether there is a man in the country who loved his wife better than did secretary morton and there are few hiis husbands bands who have been more devoted to their memory I 1 heard something of the story w while av ile I 1 was in nebraska this summer morton was engaged to his wife when she was fourteen she was married to him at the age of twenty one and their married life was one long honeymoon ot of twenty seven years she bore him four boys and when she died these four sons formed the tall pallbearers pall bearers who carried her to the tom tomb during my talk with secretary morton I 1 spoke of his wife and asked him if he had a picture of her he took a locket from his left breast pocket and handed it to me on the back of it was the face of a very pretty woman and as I 1 looked at it the secretary told me that it was the picture of his wife and he feelingly referred to her influence over his life and her character he handed me a memoir which was published at the time of her death and he told me that this locket had never been out of his hands since that time she was indeed the best half of the Secre soul and his life since she died has been wrapped up in his children and grandchildren the four morton boys are all married and the secretary has a number of grandchildren on thanksgiving of iago 1890 the Secret secretary arv held a sort of morton reunion at his home and photographs were taken of the little mortons in all shapes and in all sorts of groups A book has been made of these pictures and the dignified secretary appears in many of them in iii some pictures the children have their heads ornamented with leaves and feathers and one of the pictures represents a wrestling match in which one of the participants looks strikingly like secretary morton another represents wirt morton a lusty laughing baby with its finger in its mouth and the subscription states that the infant is aged six months I 1 noted at the first of this book that it bore the book plate of the secretary of agriculture it consists of a tree and a scroll under it in which are printed the words plant trees below this is the inscription arbor lodge and secre tary mortons Mo Mor rions tons name which he parts in the middle and prints J sterling morton As I 1 looked at this the conversation turned to th the rae p planting lanting of trees and the secretary told me that trees have been planted in nebraska since since he inaugurated the institution of arbor day there in 1875 HOW UNCLE SAMS MONEY IS WASTED the conversation here turned to the department of agriculture and I 1 asked the secretary whether he was making any changes in the methods of running it he replied 1 I am making a great many and I 1 am trying to bring the department down to a practical business basis I 1 believe in spending money where it should be spent but I 1 dont believe in wasting it I 1 have already found a number of big leaks which I 1 am stopping one is in these experimental stations which have been established by the department over the country why I 1 found one at garden city kan the business of which was to evolve a grass which would grow on the arid and plains of the west twenty two thousand dollars have been spent on it in five years and a professor veasy is t trying ing there to produce a grass which will grow without rain water or soil a sort of grass orchard I 1 presume from what inquiries I 1 made I 1 found that this pro lessor veasy had a home address at denver colorado and he be seemed to be only heard from at the times when his salary was due I 1 have stopped the appropriation and I 1 suppose he hc will now materialize in sonic some shape or other OTHER FAT JOBS kansas always gets its share of the appropriations continued secretary morton in looking oyer over the state I 1 find that plumb and ingalls have patched it all over with just such jobs but similar things exist in other states too I 1 got a request the other day for 50 50 for a united states flag which wits was to be put up over a sugar beet farm ut at schuyler neb I 1 see the reason for the appropriation and I 1 in invest vesti ir gated the station I 1 found it was costing us over a year and that ail we could get out ot of it was some beet seed which the regular sugar beet factories would send to us if we would only pay the freight we pay on these experimental stations about 36 oooo a year and I 1 think the most of them should be abolished my idea is that experimenting should be done through the agricultural experiment stations of the states there are forty four of these scattered all over the union they get an appropriation pria tion from congress of a year this goes directly to them andover it we have no control I 1 think that the seeds could be distributed through these experiment stations and not by by the congressmen it costs ai a year to send out seeds from here I 1 am going to recommend congress to abolish this part of our business As the seeds are now sent out they do not reach the parties they should nor do the proper kind of seeds get to the proper localities THE GREAT AMERICAN HOG what are you going to do as to the meat inspection mr secretary I 1 asked 1 I am going to abolish a good part ot it was the reply our meat exports to germany last year amounted to only 2000 and I 1 find that the germans inspected re all the meat that came in we sent worth to england where there was no inspection them the inspection costs a vast deal more than it comes to and in eleven months it has footed up a total of about wy why duin during g that timp time we paid out to inspect the meat aj agthe the indian apolis abattoirs abatto irs and how much meat do you think was exported from here just lust 50 50 for every dollars worth of pork sent to germany from indianapolis we paid more than |