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Show o SLOVENLY FARMING. It is a fact, not vjry pleasant to contemplate, that our population increases in-creases much more rapidly than the yield of food-stuffs and other farm products. Hence, we no longer enjoy that inestimable blessing, cheap living, liv-ing, without which no people can long continue prosperous. There is a remedy intelligent, diligent, dili-gent, and thrifty cultivatio(j of the soil. If American farmers should adopt and adhere to the methods of Belgmn and French farmers, in less than a decade the yield of our farm products would be more than doubled. We claim to be the most energetic and procrosMve population in the world, and yet, as a rule, our farmers arc some millions of slovenly agri- il culturists. Abandoned farms, worn-out worn-out old fields, puny crops, weedy pas- ' turcs in evefy St'atc attest this lamentable la-mentable fact. Collier's Weekly cites poor .seed as one cause of thriftless farming in the corn States. Where $2,000 in premiums prem-iums arc offered at county fairs for horse shows, but $10 in reward arc bestowed for the corn shows; whereas where-as excellence in seeds is more desirable desir-able than superiority in live stock, for it requires grain and forage to make a fine horse, ia fine cow, a fine sheep, or a fine hog. If every grain of corn planted were perfect, that of itself would double the yield of corn, and it requires no more labor to cul- i tivatc a stalk from a faultless grain J than one from a defective grain, and the same is true of wheat, oats, rye, barley, and all the vegetables. In a 1 measure, it is true of cotton, rice, and t tobacco; possibly so of hemp, clover, alfalfa, and other grasses. , There should) be more agricultural schools, and every one should have a professor in love with his science, graduated from Luther Burbank's j farm. American farms, properly tilled, could supply the world with food. A s k farmer in York county, Pa., has sue- cceded in making an average yield of 35 barrels 175 bushels of corn per acre on his land. H3e did this by intelligent in-telligent rotation, perfect cultivation, and the propagation of a faultless seed. When he began, his average yield on the same farm was less that) ten barrels an acre. What that man did any other farmer farm-er of the corn belt can do by employ- j ing the same system of cultivation and devoting to the work the same love of the soil, the same intelligence to plan, and the same energy to execute. exe-cute. If some philanthropist like Mr. ' Carnegie should offer $100,000 as reward re-ward for improved seeds, it would bring more benefit to the American people than $1,000,000 in libraries. j |